Quebec adolescent sport survey moves beyond convenience samples
Interpersonal violence in organized sport is usually studied through selective groups that already have a reason to speak up. This Quebec analysis took a different route: it nested a sport-violence survey inside a representative provincial health survey of high school students, a design that gives the findings far more epidemiologic weight than a one-off convenience sample.
The study, known as the Study on the Experiences of Adolescents in Sport Contexts in Quebec, or ÉVAQ, was embedded within the Quebec Health Survey of High School Students. Students from 485 high schools were recruited between November 2022 and June 2023, with flyers distributed during in-class completion of the provincial health survey. Eligibility for the sport violence questionnaire was limited to adolescents aged 14 to 17 years, the same age band that anchors much of youth organized sport participation and early exposure to coaching, team hierarchy, and peer dynamics.
A total of 19,642 adolescents were included, consisting of 8,978 boys, 10,515 girls, and 149 students who identified as another gender. Those numbers matter because they show how broad the sampling frame was and how much the study moved beyond the narrow lens that often shapes violence research in sport. In a field where underreporting and selection bias can distort the true scale of harm, a population-based sample changes the evidentiary baseline.
Why a population-based design changes the picture
The central concern in this area is not only whether violence occurs, but who gets counted when researchers ask about it. Convenience samples tend to oversample adolescents already connected to advocacy spaces, injury services, or public discussions about abuse, which can inflate certain estimates while missing quieter patterns of coercion, humiliation, or boundary violations. A survey nested inside a provincial health study reduces some of that distortion by reaching adolescents through a routine school-based process rather than through self-selection into a violence study.
That design also makes the setting clinically and socially relevant. Organized sport is often framed as a site of physical conditioning and psychosocial development, yet it is also a structured environment in which power differentials are explicit. Coaches, older athletes, teammates, and staff can each exert influence over access, playing time, belonging, and status. In adolescents, those relationships are especially sensitive because identity formation, sexual development, and dependence on adult approval are all unfolding at the same time.
Cross-sectional data cannot prove causality, but they can establish prevalence and identify patterns that deserve tighter scrutiny. The investigators used weighted random-intercept Poisson regression models to estimate prevalence rates and prevalence ratios, an analytical choice suited to population survey data and more informative than simple unadjusted comparisons when the outcome is common. Weighted models also help preserve the representativeness of the sample, which is essential when the goal is to estimate how often interpersonal violence occurs in the broader adolescent sport population rather than in a narrow volunteer subgroup.
Exposure measurement in a setting built on hierarchy
The questionnaire focused on interpersonal violence in sport, a term that captures harm occurring within the organized athletic context rather than outside it. In practice, that can include experiences shaped by authority gradients, peer aggression, intimidation, and other forms of mistreatment that are not always visible in injury registries or disciplinary records. The term is broad because the phenomenon is broad. Adolescents may encounter harm through repeated patterns of verbal degradation, control, harassment, or coercive behavior long before any incident is formally recognized as abuse.
The study’s framing matters because sport violence is rarely a single event. It often operates through routine contact, repeated exposure, and the normalization of behaviors that would be less tolerated in other youth settings. A young athlete may accept a damaging interaction because of team loyalty, fear of exclusion, or the belief that enduring mistreatment is part of elite progression. That makes population-based measurement particularly valuable: it captures not only severe episodes but also the more ordinary forms of harm that accumulate over time.
One sentence stands out in practical terms: a representative adolescent cohort can reveal violence patterns that remain hidden in complaint-driven research.
What the extracted text confirms and what it leaves open
The available article text clearly establishes the study population, sampling frame, age restriction, and analytic strategy. It also confirms that the researchers were aiming to estimate both prevalence and associated factors, not simply describe isolated cases. What is not included in the extracted body is the actual set of prevalence estimates, the specific factors associated with violence, and the magnitude of those associations. Those missing numbers are not a minor detail; they are the results that determine where prevention efforts should be focused, whether by sex, gender, sport type, training environment, or other adolescent characteristics.
Still, the design itself already answers an important methodological question. If a population-based school survey can detect interpersonal violence in sport with enough resolution to support weighted prevalence modeling, then future surveillance can move away from the assumption that only highly visible or self-selected athletes are affected. That has implications for prevention programs, coach education, safeguarding policies, and school-linked reporting pathways.
Another practical point follows directly from the cohort structure. Adolescents aged 14 to 17 are often moving into more intense training schedules, more specialized teams, and more adult oversight. The sport environment becomes more consequential at precisely the age when peer pressure and authority dependence can make abuse harder to disclose. A survey that reaches students in that window has the potential to identify problems before they harden into entrenched patterns.
The publication opens a useful methodological door, but the omitted prevalence values and associated-factor estimates are the figures that will determine how loudly the findings should reverberate through youth sport policy.