None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
The research team partnered with Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA), Life Saving Victoria (LSV), and local council to co-design a learning-focused intervention. Learning had been identified through a pilot study conducted in 2021, in which beachgoers requested skills and opportunities for learning from the beach safety sector. The themes and best practices to be covered in the lesson were drawn from the pilot study, the literature, and then discussed amongst the research team and representatives of the risk sector, including those overseeing lifeguards in the case study region. The lifeguards to participate in the lesson were invited to contribute to these discussions but, being predominantly young university students, were unavailable. A finalized list of 19 actions were identified and incorporated into development of the lesson and into the codebook for measuring impact.
Interventions
Existing interventions for drowning prevention presume that awareness translates into changed behaviors and rely on ineffective mass communications to progress from individual- to population-scale impact. The quasi-experimental intervention developed here uses a 20-minute beach safety lesson delivered by lifeguards at the beach on the topics of: what the beach safety flags mean, how to identify a rip current, how to safely escape a rip current, and how to safely perform a bystander rescue. Lesso
Existing interventions for drowning prevention presume that awareness translates into changed behaviors and rely on ineffective mass communications to progress from individual- to population-scale impact. The quasi-experimental intervention developed here uses a 20-minute beach safety lesson delivered by lifeguards at the beach on the topics of: what the beach safety flags mean, how to identify a rip current, how to safely escape a rip current, and how to safely perform a bystander rescue. Lessons are delivered three times a day at 11am, 1 pm and 3 pm. There will be 10 participants in each lesson. Each participant in the intervention (i.e., lesson) is expected to have attended one lesson and participated in a meaningful engagement that is designed to encourage active reflection that can generate learning and the adoption of risk mitigation behaviors that spillover to non-participants and to other contexts. In our engagements, ‘active processing’ is oriented towards ‘the self’, asking participants to actively consider their own perceptions and behaviors in the context of having just experienced a lesson situated on the beach concerning drowning prevention. Our contention is that external efforts to convince participants through appeals to sympathy might be improved through active personal perspective-experiences, and that reflection on personal experience offers a more situated and persuasive impact pathway towards lasting adoption of drowning prevention behaviors. Strategies used to monitor adherence to the intervention are twofold. The first includes participation in a mixed quantitative survey and qualitative semi-structured interview after participation in the lesson that is designed to assess the impact of the lesson. The second is by conducting follow-up interviews six months following the intervention to assess the impact of the lesson, over time.
Sponsors
Surf Life Saving Australia
Study design
Allocation
Non-randomised trial
Primary purpose
Prevention
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
For the intervention, consenting beach-goers that are 18 years old or older and participated in the safety lesson. Participants in the control must be consenting beach-goers that are 18 years old or older that did not participate in the safety lesson.
Exclusion criteria
None
Outcome results
None listed