Divers Wanted for Online Research Study

[Rilelen]

Hi all, longtime SB-member here. I'm part of a research team at the University of Florida studying psychology/human factors in scuba diving. We are currently running an online study on perceptions of cave and tech diving. The study is quick (5-10 minutes; if it takes you longer, let me know!) and anonymous, and you're welcome to skip any questions you aren't comfortable answering. You can take the study here: UF Diver Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management

We are especially interested in the perspective of members of the dive community - divers at any level of experience are welcome to participate, you don't need to be a cave/tech diver to participate, or even certified (yet). I plan to post an update with our results (and, eventually, the published paper) once the study is complete, so we will definitely let you know what we find! Please feel free to share the link with other divers or your own local dive communities - the more divers that participate, the better our community is represented.

(And, if you're local to Florida, our lab may be looking to recruit new and experienced volunteer divers for some in-person research studies on psychological factors in diving over the next couple years...stay tuned!)

 

[lowwall]

I took it. Better designed than most survey questions we get here.

My one issue is on the generic safety/danger questions. Since you didn't specify whether or not it's for a properly trained diver, I felt like I could not provide meaningful answers.

 

[Cthippo]

Completed it, feedback submitted. The explination of the intent at the end was useful because I was not selected into the experimental group and so it felt like a nothingburger.

 

[Scythegpd]

I did it and was part of the experimental group (with picture). My views:
The questions were a bit wide. For example (paraphrasing) “if you’re diving and see a cave do you want to go in?”.
Well what type of cave? Is it one I’d need to remove my gear and squeeze in? Is it back mount or sidemount sized? What are the conditions like (eg loose looking rocks overhead). I think the questions would be better served with specifics, for example a photo of a cave with “Would you enter THIS cave?”
I just applied my view and opinion of cave diving in general, the picture was irrelevant as, in my opinion, any reasonable diver (in the absence of warning signs) should use their own judgement and consider their safety contingencies (again, for example, if I’m diving single tank back mount it’s unlikely I’d go into a cave, if sidemount then more likely)

Also not sure why income level is asked, especially if this is open to non-US divers like me, where the US income bands have no relevance to those earning in another country.

 

[grantwiscour]

I did it...as stated above it is better than most of the surveys that I have seen here.

As ,Scythegpd said...what type of cave, etc.? I understood the gyst of what you were getting at. I'm not what we consider a "cave diver" on SB. I wouldn't go in the cave systems of north florida. I am not one who removes my BC and pushes it into a restriction and then slides my body through. There are some caves that I will enter in the Caribbean and Hawaii that don't provide the same level of hazard as what is considered a typical cave dive. Inherent risks are still involved but not to the extent of what is commonly discussed as cave diving.

 

[Rilelen]

Many thanks to those who have participated so far - we have a large sample of non-divers and newly certified divers (from other data collections), so getting a broader range of participants is incredibly helpful. We deeply appreciate it.

Answers below to some questions include research spoilers, so if you haven't taken the study yet (and want to), do that first before reading further!

I took it. Better designed than most survey questions we get here.

My one issue is on the generic safety/danger questions. Since you didn't specify whether or not it's for a properly trained diver, I felt like I could not provide meaningful answers.

Thanks, and we agree; to keep it consistent across conditions we left those items intentionally vague but we are in total agreement with you. We will likely run a follow-up study on exactly that question. We would predict that experienced tech/cave divers would be better at distinguishing those as different questions ("safe in general" vs "safe for untrained divers" vs "safe for trained divers").

We will be analyzing answers for trained cave divers separately, since it's totally okay and appropriate for folks with the proper cave training to plan and intend to do so.

Completed it, feedback submitted. The explination of the intent at the end was useful because I was not selected into the experimental group and so it felt like a nothingburger.

Thanks, and glad the info at the end was helpful to give an idea of what we were doing (and why your version may not have been very interesting! I always feel bad for the control group, and try to include some context for that condition especially - essentially it serves as a baseline so that we can see how other conditions differ, but that's not very exciting for the people providing the baseline).

I did it and was part of the experimental group (with picture). My views:
The questions were a bit wide. For example (paraphrasing) “if you’re diving and see a cave do you want to go in?”.
Well what type of cave? Is it one I’d need to remove my gear and squeeze in? Is it back mount or sidemount sized? What are the conditions like (eg loose looking rocks overhead). I think the questions would be better served with specifics, for example a photo of a cave with “Would you enter THIS cave?”
I just applied my view and opinion of cave diving in general, the picture was irrelevant as, in my opinion, any reasonable diver (in the absence of warning signs) should use their own judgement and consider their safety contingencies (again, for example, if I’m diving single tank back mount it’s unlikely I’d go into a cave, if sidemount then more likely)

Also not sure why income level is asked, especially if this is open to non-US divers like me, where the US income bands have no relevance to those earning in another country.

Agreed on the nuance of the questions, and also your overall observation; I updated the debrief at the end to address these questions for people that take the study in the future. We have run a couple versions of this study but mostly on non-divers or very new/inexperienced divers. We don’t expect to see those same effects in more experienced divers (who probably already know this info!), and that’s one reason we are explicitly trying to recruit divers with a broader range of backgrounds/experience levels, so that we can test that. In particular, we plan to analyze responses for cave divers separately, because the items may mean something very different to them.

The income question (and all the demographics) are mostly so we can check whether our sample represents general diver demographics. For instance, we know divers skew older/more male/more conservative, so if our sample ends up being younger/mostly women/more liberal, we would have some questions about how well/whether it actually generalizes to the overall population of divers out in the wild.

 

[Rilelen]

I did it...as stated above it is better than most of the surveys that I have seen here.

As ,Scythegpd said...what type of cave, etc.? I understood the gyst of what you were getting at. I'm not what we consider a "cave diver" on SB. I wouldn't go in the cave systems of north florida. I am not one who removes my BC and pushes it into a restriction and then slides my body through. There are some caves that I will enter in the Caribbean and Hawaii that don't provide the same level of hazard as what is considered a typical cave dive. Inherent risks are still involved but not to the extent of what is commonly discussed as cave diving.

Thanks for the input, and for taking the study! That's probably a distinction we should (and will) look at in a follow-up study; we know the general description is quite vague. We suspect that those differences will matter a lot to more experienced divers (who know enough to understand those distinctions) but less so to newer or untrained divers, who may not have the experience or knowledge to make more fine-grained distinctions.

 

[Underwater Tourist]

You could argue its borderline semantics, and I am only mentioning it because you said you might look at results from trained divers separately

But when you ask if "cave diving is dangerous", just wanted to make sure you were asking about “cave diving” and not “caves”?

I would guess most of the trained cave divers agree that “caves” are dangerous, but “cave diving” isn’t

I hope this post doesn’t sidetrack the thread into oblivion now

 

[Johnoly]

Done !

I'm cave1 cert and like the above, I chose the 'closest' answer even though it's wide spectrum. Hope it helps.

 

[lowwall]

Welcome to Scubaboard. Second home of the amateur Tetrapyloctomist.

We'll have to see," Belbo said. He rummaged in his drawer and took out some sheets of paper. "Potio-section..." He looked at me, saw my bewilderment. "Potio-section, as everybody knows, of course, is the art of slicing soup. No, no," he said to Diotallevi. "It's not the department, it's a subject, like Mechanical Avunculogratulation or Pylocatabasis. They all under the same heading of Tetrapyloctomy."

"What's tetra...?" I asked.

"The art of splitting hairs four ways. This is the department of useless techniques. Mechanical Avunculogratulation, for example, is how to build machines for greeting uncles. We're not sure, though, if Pylocatabasis belongs, since it's the art of being saved by a hair. Somehow that doesn't seem completely useless."

"All right, gentlemen," I said, "I give up. What are you two talking about?"

"Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossible courses are given. The school's main is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects.

― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

Which may be why my answers for the [paraphrased] questions "Is cave diving dangerous?" and "Is cave diving safe?" are both "Yes (sort of)".