I am interested in this research question for many reasons, one being that I have always been involved in sports from a young age.  I played sports throughout my childhood and up through my high school years.  Even today I keep up with sports and I follow South Carolina's many sports.  This research does not directly affect my values, however, it may affect how I view sports injuries and the changes they make to prevent concussions.  My own personal experience with this subject is quite close.  When I was in 10th grade of high school, I suffered a concussion while I was on the baseball team.  I got hit in the head with a baseball and immediately suffered a concussion.  I have also witnessed several other concussions take place while on the baseball field. These instances opened my eyes to the risks of concussions.  I am qualified to write about this because of my experience with the issue and my research of the topic.


This article claims that stopping concussions is near impossible to do. To completely prevent them we would have to change human behavior.  If we changed human behavior then that would change how sports are played all together. American citizens would not be keen to changes in how our sports are played.

The overall interest of this article is to show how concussions are so hard to prevent. There are obvious interests of the actual meaning of what a concussion is and how dangerous they can really be.  The dynamics of the brain injury is defined and broken down showing great knowledge of the subject.

The author of this article seems very credible in the way that the article is written and due to his credentials.  He has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, and is also a professor of kinesiology at Penn State.  There doesn't appear to be any bias in this article as he backs up his claims with extensive scientific support on the issue.


The article is based on the discovery of a new disease related to NFL football players and concussions.  The autopsy of a former NFL player revealed a disease that had never been seen before.  This is what the movie "Concussion" is based upon with Will Smith as the leading actor.

This article does not affect my values but it should  open the eyes to the public on how many different possible outcomes there are from concussions in sports.  A new disease was discovered and it was due to hitting in sports.  If a new disease was discovered there must be many different possible outcomes.

This article is credible due to the fact that he discovered this disease, CTE.  The awareness of this disease has since spread.  The NFL turned the other cheek and would continue to deny that a disease was found. The purpose of his autopsy and finding the disease was not of personal merit but a faith journey that shows the priorities of humans.


This article has a central claim that concussions are killing kids in high school. It asks the question of why we are continuing to let them play. The evidence used in this article was an example of someone dying in high school.  The article claims that awareness is key and essential to preventing more injuries.

The values of this article is clear.  The purpose is to spread awareness and to make sure people know the dangers of hard hitting in sports.  People have died and the rest of the country needs to be aware of what has happened and what can happen in the future.

The credibility of this article is not as clear as the other articles.  The evidence used seems to be quite tragic and dark.  The bias in this article is clearly against concussions.

This research question is very arguable as it is a very prevalent occurrence during current times.  There are two sides to the argument and one side is backed by billion dollar industries like the NFL.  This sets up the question to have many feasible sources that could be used for the writing.  Through the sources that I used there  was a common theme that awareness is key to being able to prevent the terrible affects of concussions.  Although, one of the sources showed much more bias towards making changes to the way football is played. The different perspectives of the sources show how there are two stark sides to this argument.  The two sides open possibilities of many perspectives and opens my mind up to both sides of the issue. I may revise my research question by making it specific to one sport, like football.
