Research ArticlesAlcohol-influenced recreational boat operation in the United States, 1994
Section snippets
Background
A lcohol consumption is involved in a significant number of water-related fatalities.1, 2 Of the 783 recreational boating fatalities in the United States in 1994, 14% were alcohol related. Indeed, the proportion of alcohol related boating fatalities has climbed in recent years to an all time high; 1991 = 19%, 1992 = 20%, 1993 = 20%, 1994 = 14%, 1995 = 21%, and 1996 = 27% (personal communications: Bruce Schmidt, US Coast Guard, Office of Boating Safety, Recreational Boating Program Management
Methods
The Injury Control and Risk Survey (ICARIS) was conducted by Battelle and DataStat through funding by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Telephone numbers of households from all 50 states and the District of Columbia were selected randomly from a proprietary database containing telephone exchanges with at least 2 listed telephone numbers. Telephone exchanges with greater than 10% of households occupied by minorities were oversampled to increase minority representation. At least 6
Results
Of respondents, 1136 (weighted 23%) reported motor boating in the past 12 months and 597 (weighted 12%) reported operating a motor boat. Operation of a motor boat was associated with several characteristics including gender, age, household income, education level, and marital status (Table 1). Among motor boat operators, operators were significantly more likely to be male, between 25 and 34 years of age, have a household income exceeding $50,000 per year, and to be married.
Among all respondents
Discussion
This survey estimated that 31% of Americans who reported operating a motor boat during 1994 did so at least once while alcohol-influenced. This estimate is similar to the 29% to 32% estimates of studies of all boaters 4, 5, 6 dating back to 1988. This similarity suggests the occurrence of alcohol-influenced boating has not decreased significantly since 1988. This study also suggested that alcohol-influenced use of a motor boat is associated with other risk taking behaviors, such as driving a
Acknowledgements
The following are members of the ICARIS (Injury Control and Risk Survey) project which designed and conducted the survey from which these data were obtained: Principal investigator: Jeffrey J. Sacks, MD, MPH. Project core group: Barbara Houston, Marcie-jo Kresnow, MS, Joann M. O’Neil, BA, and Suzanne M. Smith, MD, MPH, of NCIPC; James Hersey, PhD, Rick Williams, PhD, and Aiman Zeid, MS, of Battelle; Sherry Marcy, MPH and Deborah J. Zivan, BA of DataStat. Project associates: Julie Bolen, PhD,
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