Piloting a mass gathering conceptual framework at an Adelaide schoolies festival

During the summer months in Australia, school leavers celebrate their end of school life at schoolies festivals around the nation. These events are typically described as a mass gathering as they are an organised event taking place within a defined space, attended by a large number of people. A project was undertaken to analyse the usefulness of Arbon's (2004) conceptual model of mass gatherings in order to develop a process to better understand the Adelaide Schoolies Festival.

Arbon's conceptual framework describes the inter-relationship between the psychosocial, environmental and bio-medical domains of a mass gathering. Each domain has set characteristics which help to understand the impact on the mass gathering event. The characteristics within three domains were collected using field work and bio-medical data to examine the relationship between injury and illness rates.

Using the conceptual framework to evaluate this schoolies event helped create an understanding of the physiology, environment and behaviour contributing to patient presentations. Results showed that the schoolies crowd was active and energetic, and the main crowd behaviour observed was dancing and socialising with friends. The environmental domain was characterised by a grassy outdoor venue that was bounded and dry. Due to the overall health of the crowd, activities undertaken and the supportive environment, the majority of injuries to schoolies were minor (68%). However, twenty-four percent of schoolies who presented with alcohol related illness were found to have consumed alcohol at risky levels; half of this cohort was transported to hospital.

The conceptual framework successfully guided a higher level of examination of the mass gathering event. In particular, the framework facilitated a greater understanding of the inter-relationships of the various characteristics of a mass gathering event, in this case the Adelaide Schoolies Festival.