Evaluating the influential factors for life preserver donning tests

Life preservers often play a vital role in ensuring passenger safety in water-related accidents, while the difficulty of donning life preservers has been repeatedly proved even in a donning test. To evaluate the influencing factors for life preserver donning tests, 109 college students and 42 villagers were chosen as subjects. A total of fourteen variables with seven categorical variables and seven continuous variables were considered as potential influencing factors. T-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA, for three or more categories) were used to judge whether grouping in categorical variables had a significant effect on the donning performance. Then all variables were offered into the stepwise linear regression (SLR) to evaluate the influential factors for life preserver donning tests. Results showed that four of fourteen variables, including gender, instruction condition, age group, and tool test time (representing the subject's flexibility), had a significant effect on the donning performance. To evaluate the relationship between the donning performance and influencing factors, models of the retrieving time, the opening time, and the donning time were built based on the SLR analysis. The paper also highlights recommendations for modification of the donning test procedure, which helps to improve the validation and reliability of life preserver donning tests.