School Shootings & Psychological Impact of Injury - Jadyn Turner

Project Summary

School Shootings: In the United States school shootings have become an epidemic, taking the lives of hundreds of students and teachers across the country and impacting thousands more. Due to the growth in media coverage of school shootings the knowledge of these events have become more widespread. The growth in media coverage has undoubtedly changed the narrative around school shootings and how they are seen in the public eye. This study looked at two school shootings (Santa Fe High School and Umpqua Community College) and how they were covered in the Washington Post and the New York Times to determine if the location of the school shooting or the location of the news paper had any effect on how the shooting was covered. By analyzing the articles written in the New York Times and the Washington post in the 20 days following each shooting, it was found that the location of a school shooting or the location of the newspaper impacts the coverage that is received on the shooting. Overall geography was found to impact the overall coverage of the shootings, in most categories there was no significance in the difference in coverage.

Sports Psychology: At some point in almost every athlete’s career, they will face injury. As we know, injury can cause physical trauma and put a strain on the athlete’s body. In addition to the physical injury, there also is a psychological impact that the injury has on an athlete. The issue of injury does not only exist in professional and high-level collegiate athletes but also in high school athletes. In this study, high school athletes who faced injuries that made them unable to play sports for an extended period were recruited. The purpose was to determine if there was a relationship between the physical severity and the psychological severity of the injury and to determine if an athlete's college plans correlated with a more severe psychological impact compared to athletes who did not plan on a college athletic career. By analyzing the survey results from thirty-eight athletes it was determined that there was a correlation between the physical severity of injury affects psychological severity. It was also determined that there is no significant effect between whether an athlete is planning to play a sport in college and the psychological impact.