Objective To evaluate optimal methods for educating individuals about concussions.

Design Prospective randomised controlled trial.

Setting University setting.

Participants 162 undergraduate students.

Intervention Students from a university participant pool were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: 1) control group (CN); 2) internet group (IG); 3) presentation group (PG). All subjects completed the knowledge concussion questionnaire (18 questions) in the concussion knowledge section of the questionnaire published by Rosenbaum & Arnett (2014). Subjects completed a pretest and a posttest. The IG was provided with 3 websites and given 30 minutes to review this material. The PG group was involved in a 45 minute interactive lecture from a neuropsychologist.

Main outcome measure Concussion knowledge.

Main results A repeated measures ANOVA suggested a significant interaction between group and time F (2, 159)=30.2, p<0.001. The PG demonstrated significantly higher scores at posttest compared with both the IG and CN groups [(F (2, 159)=12.6, p<0.001 although all groups presented with improved scores at the posttest interval compared with the pretest. Post-hoc pairwise comparison at posttest interval between CN and IG groups did not reach statistical significance (p=0.50). Specific items suggested inaccurate information about concussions may be common in the undergraduate population.

Conclusions There are many methods used to educate athletes about concussions. As expected, an interactive presentation about concussions was more effective at improving concussion knowledge than reviewing information from the internet. Results also suggested the importance of clarifying existing myths about concussions

Conflicts There were no conflicts to declare.

Competing interests None.