Development and trial of a water exposure measure of estimated drowning risk for surf bathers
- Authors: Morgan, Damian , Ozanne-Smith, Joan
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Aquatic Research and Education Vol. 7, no. 2 (2013 2013), p. 116-135
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- Description: To better address drowning issues, risk assessment at the group and sample levels would be enhanced by precise measures of exposure to water. The aim of the study was to develop and pilot test a method of measuring exposure to water based on estimating immersions for surf bathers. Validated direct observation counts provided peak-bathing period point estimates and a daily bather immersion profile for an identified sampling frame comprising 20 beaches over 39 summer days. An estimated 10,089 water immersions occurred at the peak-bathing period in the sampling frame. Swimmers comprised 86.0% and surfers with equipment 14.0% of the observed bathing sample, respectively. For swimmers only on patrolled beaches, 77.1% bathed in the lifesaver supervised (flag) zones. The study has implications for the provision of organized bather supervision and provides a foundation for generation of hypotheses on the nature of drowning risk for selected surf bather groups.
A configural model of expert judgement as a preliminary epidemiological study of injury problems: An application to drowning
- Authors: Morgan, Damian , Ozanne-Smith, Joan
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: PLoS ONE Vol. 14, no. 10 (2019), p.
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- Description: Robust epidemiological studies identifying determinants of negative health outcomes require significant research effort. Expert judgement is proposed as an efficient alternative or preliminary research design for risk factor identification associated with unintentional injury. This proposition was tested in a multi-factorial balanced experimental design using specialist judges (N = 18), lifeguards and surfers, to assess the risk contribution to drowning for swimming ability, surf bathing experience, and wave height. All factors provided unique contributions to drowning risk (p < .001). An interaction (p = .02) indicated that occasional surf bathers face a proportionally increased risk of drowning at increased wave heights relative to experienced surf bathers. Although findings were limited by strict criteria, and no gold standard comparison data were available, the study provides new evidence on causal risk factors for a drowning scenario. Countermeasures based on these factors are proposed. Further application of the method may assist in developing new interventions to reduce unintentional injury. © 2019 Morgan, Ozanne-Smith. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.