So I have to write a research essay. I've decided to write about eventing and the dangers of cross country. I need help finding academic articles about injury/fatality statistics, research on how to make it safer, what we're actually doing to make it safer, etc. If anyone could help me out it would be really great!!

COTH forums. Always a hot topic and plenty of existing threads. I'd encourage you to not make it a sensational danger kind of thing. Eventing needs support with the changing economy and formats and it's already under a lot of scrutiny. But I am in the camp that actual research and dollars need to be put forward for safety. No more stupid air vests. Get the exo funded. More statistics on dangerous jumps and WHY falls are happening at certain jumps. All that.

If you are at a university then I would imagine you have some sort of library catalogue that you can use to find journal articles that you can access for free?

Interstellar Farms said:
COTH forums. Always a hot topic and plenty of existing threads. I'd encourage you to not make it a sensational danger kind of thing. Eventing needs support with the changing economy and formats and it's already under a lot of scrutiny. But I am in the camp that actual research and dollars need to be put forward for safety. No more stupid air vests. Get the exo funded. More statistics on dangerous jumps and WHY falls are happening at certain jumps. All that.

I totally support eventing. I believe that people should do more research on rotational falls and how to prevent them. In the long run air vests aren't really going to protect people. Something that is just done for fun for a lot of people shouldn't lead to so many injuries and deaths.

C.B. Eventing said:
If you are at a university then I would imagine you have some sort of library catalogue that you can use to find journal articles that you can access for free?

If not, use google scholar. This is your best bet to find genuine, peer reviewed academic journal articles. Also, be wary of using forums as a means of finding your facts. They are going to be very subject to biased opinions so try to steer clear.

And whilst I agree with Interstellar, you should be careful of bringing your/other people's opinions into your argument. You need to keep a clear mind when writing your argument and should not be blind sided to one argument.

The school I'm going to is unfortunately really small. I found 4 articles in our library that would work, but I need more. I'll definitely try google scholar. Thanks for mentioning that. I'm also going to be bringing in opposing arguments so the essay isn't a one sided argument.

I never said to use the forum conversation in the research. But if you look up the threads plenty of people do link to actual articles and what little research their actually is. There aren't going to be many peer reviewed articles to pull up on this, because there aren't many.