Abstract:
Trauma, as defined by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
(SAMHSA; 2014a), is “an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by
an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse
effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual wellbeing”
(p. 7). Due to the high prevalence and lasting effects, trauma has been named a public
health issue (Crouch et al., 2019; Felitti et al., 1998). In particular, the youth population is
considered at-risk, with more than two thirds of children reporting at least one traumatic event by
the age of 16 (Copeland et al., 2007). While various settings (e.g., healthcare, education) have
adopted a trauma-informed approach to help combat the prevalence of trauma and serve as a
resource for the youth population, the sport setting may also serve as an opportunity to develop
youth who have experienced trauma. However, because the intersectionality of youth sport with
an intentional trauma-informed focus is relatively new, little research exists on the components
and outcomes of programs that employ this approach. Thus, the current study will explore the
following research questions, adopted from Massey and Whitley (2020): (1) Are there contextspecific
features that need to be tailored to each individual setting of trauma-informed youth
sport programs? If so, what are these components? (2) Are there common components of these
sport programs that engage children and youth affected by traumatic events that are largely
generalizable to other types of trauma-informed sport programs? If so, what are these
components?
This qualitative study is guided by grounded theory design with leaders (i.e.,
administrators, facilitators, directors, coaches) of trauma-informed youth sport programs to direct
the findings of this study toward contributing to the development and support of a sport-specific
trauma-informed approach within literature. The results of this study may also be insightful for
the program administrators, facilitators, and coaches who will be able to directly apply the
outcomes of this study to their work in the trauma-informed sport programs.
