) to quantify the contribution of adventure
tourism to overseas visitor injury morbidity
and mortality in New Zealand, and examine patterns and trends in adventure tourism-injury incidence;
(ii) to identify the injury risk for a wide range of New
Zealand adventure tourism activities;
(iii) to identify common injury events and key con-
tributing factors for New Zealand adventure tour-
ism injuries;
(iv) to suggest possible intervention measures to reduce
the risk of adventure tourism-related injury.
2. Methods
The research programme involved a series of studies, and used primary and secondary data to investigate adventure tourism safety from a number of perspectives. Table 1 outlines sources of data, and
describes variables considered in the analysis and information collected.
The secondary data sources used were the Ministry of
Health’s New Zealand Health Information Service
(NZHIS) public hospital morbidity files for non-New
Zealand residents (1982-1996), and NZHIS mortality
files for non-New Zealand residents (1979-1995). The
main source of primary data was an ‘injury experience’
survey of 142 New Zealand adventure tourism opera-
tors. This sample represented 47% of the 300 New
Zealand adventure tourism operators who were posted
questionnaires. Operators surveyed represented some 21
different adventure tourism activity sectors, and to-
gether catered for a total of over half a million clients
annually. Questions related to the adventure activity
provided, client injury experience of operators, injury
events and causative factors. The analysis methods used
included content analysis of narrative text, frequency,
cross-tabulation and correspondence analysis (Green-
acre, 1984).