Supervising and restricting young children’s access to water: Program evaluation of ‘Keep Watch’

Abstract

The purpose of the current research was to assess the effectiveness of several new resources which have been developed by Royal Life Saving Society of New South Wales (RLS-NSW) for addition to the Keep Watch program. These resources include fact sheets for parents and animations and games for young children and are aimed at changing the water safety behaviours of parents of children aged 3 to 5 years old. A convenience sample of parents was recruited from participating childcare centres, social media, and parenting forums. Parents were asked to complete an online questionnaire developed by RLS-NSW and Griffith University, detailing their beliefs, intentions, and behaviours relating to supervising and restricting access to water for their young children. After completing this survey, parents were referred to the resource website and asked to sign up. One month later, parents were contacted via email or phone to complete a set of identical measures, as well as to detail their usage of the new Keep Watch resources and give their opinions on the project. Data indicated no significant change in parent’s supervision or restricting behaviours over the course of the program. Similarly, neither intentions, attitudes, nor normative beliefs changed following the program. However, there was an improvement in control beliefs towards restricting access to water. Interviews with six parents who accessed the website indicated they were already extremely conscious of water safety, and thus a potential reason for the limited findings in this study. The study was hampered by a poor response rate and high level of attrition between survey time points. Further, very few participants stated they used the new Keep Watch resources. Thus, results should be viewed with a high degree of caution due to the possibility of selective responding and responses not being reflective of engagement with the program. As only a few reported they accessed the program and they were already very conscious of water safety, it may be that the volunteer-based recruitment resulted in a highly motivated sample which is not representative of the general population.