Cave Diving Research Survey

[dgschott]

There have certainly been some responses that I wonder if I should throw out due to unreasonable answers.

I'm also hard at work trying to find out how many cave divers there are out there, and my preliminary evidence has already shocked me, at how few active cave divers there might actually be. Hopefully, further research will show that there are plenty active divers out there.

Thank you to everyone who has answered the survey so far! I need alteast another 70 responses by cave divers, and another 80 by open water divers.

What are you considering 'Active'? I know there are a few people that could probably give you some good ideas on how to go about actual research of this. I also think everyone would agree that it is going to be a very tough number to get. A definition on 'Active' is key in determining injuries and fatalities among 'Active' vs 'Inactive later'.

The actual number of cave dives per year would be the most beneficial number in my mind.

[JahJahwarrior]

David,

Days diving will probably be the easiest to get. The park system, for example, will not be able to tell me how many dives every diver did, but they might be able to tell me how many people signed waivers for diving. Similarly, privately owned shops might be able to tell me how many cave divers entered the park, but will be unable to tell me how many dives every diver did. It will be hard to figure out how many unique divers there are, and hard to know how many dives are done, but days diving is feasible.

Remember, I'm just an undergraduate student, writing a paper in a one semester class. If I were doing this for a thesis, or was getting paid to perform this research, I would have much more time to devote to it, and could do much more indepth research. I'm not some professional researcher, and thus there are and will be errors in my process and final results, as some people have noticed already.

[dgschott]

David,

Days diving will probably be the easiest to get. The park system, for example, will not be able to tell me how many dives every diver did, but they might be able to tell me how many people signed waivers for diving. Similarly, privately owned shops might be able to tell me how many cave divers entered the park, but will be unable to tell me how many dives every diver did. It will be hard to figure out how many unique divers there are, and hard to know how many dives are done, but days diving is feasible.

Remember, I'm just an undergraduate student, writing a paper in a one semester class. If I were doing this for a thesis, or was getting paid to perform this research, I would have much more time to devote to it, and could do much more indepth research. I'm not some professional researcher, and thus there are and will be errors in my process and final results, as some people have noticed already.

I hear you! I meant dives done, not days diving. Remember that there are season passes for both the parks and Ginnie, that make it financially wise to get for any diver that does more than x days of diving per year. I can't remember the exact numbers, but Ginnie was around 20 days, and the parks it was around 5... So there won't be waivers or check in documents for those.

If there's anything we can do to help more, please ask - I think we'd all help oyu out as much as possible!

[JahJahwarrior]

David,

I was agreeing with you that dives done is the best measurement, but it is practically impossible to acquire that information. The most easily acquired information is how many days did divers go to the springs to dive. I could extrapolate and assume 2 dives per day, if I wanted to.

I have gotten some information from some sources already, for atleast one popular cave, which is a start. I need to contact the state parks system to see what information they could share with me. I believe I could contact Edd to get information about Jackson Blue? I've wondered about asking the cave diving oriented shops if they could give me an average yearly transaction number on fills...ie: how many cave divers got fills over a year. Doesn't tell me everything: ideally, I'd want to know how many unique backgas fills were made in a year, as that would give me the best number for number of dives done. But if someone brings two sets of doubles, those would be in one transaction. But, shops may be hesitant to provide those numbers.

For today, my goal is simply to finish the literature review. There are some interesting articles out there about risk perception, but almost nothing about cave diving. Similarly, DAN has huge reports on divers, but not technical divers. There is, simply put, no comparable resource for cave diving fatalities that I have found. The data at the IUCRR is pretty simplistic, and I've had trouble tracking down the articles that the IUCRR data references.

The feeling I'm getting is that cave diving is pretty insignificant to the general population

[dgschott]

I believe someone here did a study for his PhD on risk perception of cave divers... I can't remember who it was - a few years ago. It was interesting, though. Anyone?

[Sludge]

Bill Oigarden?

[aainslie]

That Google thing is awesome. I love those guys!

[rchrds]

couldn't make the original link work... is it already down?

Jason

[sskasser]

couldn't make the original link work... is it already down?

Jason

Working for me this morning, even behind our firewall.

[JahJahwarrior]

The link seems to work for me...I have 31 responses so far, but I have atleast 10 surveys that were emailed to me before I found out that GoogleDocs would make a survey for me for no charge, which I need to input into the form. I need atleast 100 responses from cave divers, and would love to have more than 100 responses. However, I also have several weeks before I need to have the data collected by. I'll let this keep running while I keep trying to find out how many active cave divers there are