Will they swim or sink? parental perception of water safety among their children

Introduction: The magnitude of drowning as one of the leading causes of death among children in Malaysia may have been underestimated. Little is known on the level of awareness on water safety among parents as it might be associated with appropriateness and adequacy of the supervision. This study aims to describe perceptions of water safety among parents of primary school children. Methods: A cross-sectional survey with 719 respondent conducted to obtain information on parents self-reported on their children’s water-involved activity and swimming ability, self-estimated ability to rescue their child and perceptions of the risk of drowning and water safety for their children. Results: The result revealed that about 21.6% of respondents did not perceive drowning as one of the unintentional injury leading causes of death among children. Parents reported that their children had experienced a near- drowning incident (16.1%), and only 12.2% of the child had attended a formal swimming lesson. Majority of the parents did not involve in any water safety program (98.7%), can’t swim (61.6%), not been certified in CPR (87.3%) and not confident (87.3%) to perform resuscitation (CPR). Respondents also perceived their children could swim (42.1%), and they felt confident when their child in the water (45.6%). There were statistical differences between parents who reported their child had a near-drowning experience with their perception of children’s swimming ability. Conclusion: An exploration of parent’s perception of water safety provided an overview of the need for promoting awareness on drowning risk and water safety education in this country

Relative improvements in road mobility as compared to improvements in road accessibility and urban growth: a panel data analysis

Previous studies revealed that the development of road infrastructure contributed positively to urban growth. However, the demand for and supply of different road types may change according to the level of urbanization, and this might have a significant impact on urban growth. The objectives of this study were twofold. First, to determine the investment level needed for different road types to facilitate urban growth at different levels of urbanization. Second, to understand how the development of different road types promotes export-led urban growth. We apply a fixed-effects panel linear regression analysis on a panel of 60 countries over the period of 1980–2010. The evidence presented in this study suggests that improvements in road mobility promoted export-led urban growth in countries with a low level of urbanization. This implies that policies to facilitate export should be executed in conjunction with high-mobility road network expansion to increase urbanization, especially in countries with a low level of urbanization that commonly suffer from low growth rates and that have a low level of high mobility road networks. Such expansion in road mobility is required to fulfil demands for long-distance travel to transport people from rural to urban areas. In contrast, in countries with a high level of urbanization, more investment is needed to develop roads with high accessibility. Such roads are needed to fulfil daily travel demands as a consequence of urban sprawl and decentralization of employment and populations. Moreover, the evidence shows that per capita education expenditure and physical capital stock per worker contributed to urban growth