Risk analysis for Japanese high school student's experience of physical and verbal abuse from coaches and senior students during school sport clubs activities

Abstract

 The present study was conducted to gain a better understanding of situations in which Japanese high school students are physically and verbally abused by coaches or senior students during school club activities. Individuals who had participated or were currently participating in sport clubs or culturally-oriented clubs at high school were questioned as to whether they had been abused by coaches or senior students. Relative risks were calculated in order to compare experiences between some kinds of groups.
 Data were collected in July, 2013, using an internet questionnaire. From among the roughly 38,000 persons contacted, all aged 16 to 19 years, a total of 1,438 responded, and 876 subjects were selected for statistical analysis. Subjects were questioned as to whether they had been “hit with a bare hand”, “hit by an object”, “kicked”, “had something thrown at them”, or “abused with violent language” by coaches or senior students during their high school clubs activities between July, 2012 and July, 2013. The main results were as follows:
 1) Among sport clubs members, 16.1% of female and 17.7% of male students reported having suffered physical and/or verbal abuse from coaches, and 4.7% of female and 19.8% of male students from senior students.
 2) The number of reported incidents of physical and/or verbal abuse in high school sport clubs decreased rapidly from the period July-September to October-December 2012, and continued to decrease until July 2013. This tendency was observed for physical and/or verbal abuse by coaches and senior students, and for female and male club members.
 3) Students in sport clubs suffered much more physical and/or verbal abuse from both coaches and senior students than did those in culturally-oriented clubs. Here the relative risks for “abused with violent language” (1.599) by coaches and “hit with a bare hand” (5.492), “kicked” (6.865), and “abused with violent language” (2.354) by senior students were particularly high. These results indicate the need for careful monitoring of the possibility that students in sport clubs might be victims of physical and/or verbal abuse during their activities, not only from coaches but also from senior students.
 4) Among sport club members, the relative risks for male students being “kicked” or “abused with violent language” by senior students was significantly higher than for female students. However, there were no differences in the relative risks for suffering other forms of physical and/or verbal abuse from either coaches or senior students. These results indicate that the levels of risk for experiencing physical and/or verbal abuse from both coaches and senior students are roughly the same for both female and male students in sport clubs.
 5) With regard to overlap of physical and/or verbal abuse from both coaches and senior students, students who reported being physically and/or verbally abused by coaches had a high risk of suffering such abuse from senior students. This tendency was observed for both male and female students as a group in both sport clubs and culturally-oriented clubs, and also for only male students as a group in sports clubs.