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The Safety in Sport Perception Survey

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  • Understanding the public’s perception of safety in sport, delivered in collaboration with YouGov.

    The survey provides insight into the perceptions, attitudes and behaviours influencing sports safety and sports injury. It will also assess the general understanding and awareness of sports safety as an issue.


    Objective

    Podium Analytics is a charity with a vision to create a world with more sport and less injury. With a clear mission to reduce the incidence and impact of injury in youth and grassroots sport, Podium wants to better understand the public’s perceptions, attitudes and behaviours relating to sports injury issues and, in particular, towards specific areas of Podium’s focus – sports injury recording, concussion and mental health. 

    As we scale research evidence into practical, real-world interventions and contribute to advocacy and policy development within sport, we seek to understand the public’s appetite for change, the potential impact of interventions and awareness activities, and how public perceptions shift over time.

     

    Approach

    Each year, working in collaboration with YouGov, we run a survey that captures UK representative sentiment on sports injury. 

    Since 2022, the study has provided a consistent snapshot of public opinion across the same core questions to establish longer-term trends, with the flexibility to explore emerging themes each year. Every three years, we also extend the research to 16–18-year-olds, allowing us to compare youth and adult attitudes and understand generational alignment or differences in perceptions. 

     

    Outcomes

    Year-on-year, the insights from our Safety in Sport Perception Survey are starting to reveal gradual shifts in perception over time, as well as some consistent results that validate public opinion. 

    With the protection of long-term participation in sport at the heart of Podium’s approach, the findings and our accompanying recommendations for action help to affirm our focus to date, as well as highlight research and education gaps and areas where further work is needed. 

    The reports we publish (which you can read below) provide valuable insight that informs Podium’s advocacy work and enables Podium to collaborate closely with key stakeholders across Sport, Academia and Government to tackle key sports safety issues at all levels of sport.  

     

    Some key headlines

    • 59% of young people support rule changes to reduce concussion in sport. (2023)
    • 71% of young people think coaches should consider physical and mental health problems equally important among sportspeople of all ages. (2023)
    • 72% say youth coaches should be trained to raise awareness of the mental benefits of sport. (2024)
    • 79% of people think that individuals who are more physically active lead healthier lives. (2024)
    • 74% of the public think that the NHS to record whether a head injury receiving medical attention was sustained during sport. (2025)
    • 81% of all adults think it should be compulsory for schools and clubs to record sports injuries. (2025)
    • 72% of those who belong to a sports club or team are confident their organisation would know how to manage a suspected concussion, up 6% since 2024. (2025)
    • 57% of respondents with a child at school are confident their school would know how to manage a suspected concussion, up from 54% in 2024. (2025)

     

    Explore our reports

    2025 Safety in Sport Perceptions

    2024 Safety in Sport Perceptions

    2023 Safety in Sport Perceptions

    2022 Safety in Sport Perceptions

     

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