Empowering school students in developing strategies to increase bicycle helmet wearing

This paper outlines a 2 year community-based action research program to develop strategies for increasing bicycle helmet wearing by children from a rural town in Queensland, Australia. The results of six program components are provided: student observations, focus groups (n = 50), baseline survey (n = 565), student workshops (n = 80), meeting with student representatives (n = 4) and helmet trialing program (n = 17). The children were encouraged to become active participants in the research and to develop practical strategies to increase helmet wearing. The main barriers to helmet wearing reported were poor design and peer group derision. The majority of children never wore a helmet and only 7% wore one whenever bicycle riding. Strategies suggested to make helmets more acceptable were: develop more comfortable and fashionable designs, and lower helmet costs. Students taking part in the baseline survey and workshops disagreed that helmet wearing should be compulsory; however, in later workshops and focus groups students said this was the only sure way of getting students to wear helmets. The program was not evaluated because of the non-interventionist strategy recommended by the students and the introduction of compulsory helmets. However, the project demonstrated that action research can be successfully used with children.