Maxime R. Landry-Lurette, Luc J. Martin, Jeffrey G. Caron

Sport teams are social environments where interpersonal expectations and group processes shape how individuals think, feel, and behave. In the context of sport-related concussion (SRC), athletes often make SRC disclosure decisions within a web of perceived expectations and pressures from teammates. Team norms, which are defined as the shared beliefs, expectations, and informal rules that guide thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, have been shown to influence how athletes perceive SRCs and their decisions to disclose the injury. Team norms are often informal, implicit, and reinforced through daily interactions, making them difficult to observe or measure using traditional SRC individual-level approaches. Additionally, little is known about how norms are structured within teams or how influence patterns shape athletes’ SRC-related beliefs and actions. A relational focused approach, therefore, would help us to better understand how these expectations emerge and operate within teams. This proposed study will examine SRC-related norms within a single team using an integrated Social Relations Model (SRM) and Social Network Analysis (SNA) approach. Approximately 30 athletes, coaches, and staff will complete a survey at 3 time points during the season, including a demographic questionnaire, the Concussion Attitudes Index (CAI), and both SRM and SNA components. By integrating attitudes, interpersonal dynamics, and network structure, this study will ideally determine how SRC-related norms are formed, reinforced, and distributed. We hope these findings can be used to inform psychologically grounded strategies to shift team norms in ways that support healthier and safer SRC behavioural decision-making in sport contexts.