NHTSA Task Order 1: Identifying Interventions that Promote Booster Seat Use
Study Background
Motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) remain a leading cause of death and acquired disability among children in the United States. Previous research has shown that belt-positioning booster seats (BPB) reduce the risk of consequential injuries for 4 to 7 year old children by over 50 percent when compared to seat belt restraint; in addition, BPB virtually eliminated seat belt syndrome for children in this age range.
Although BPB use has increased significantly in the last ten years, many children still travel in motor vehicles restrained inappropriately, incorrectly, or not at all. The use of appropriate child restraint is an area where behavioral intervention for both parent drivers and child passengers is essential to increase compliance. Recent interventions have been found to change behavior pertaining to BPB use in select populations; however, to facilitate this behavioral change among those least likely to use appropriate restraints further is needed.
Study Goals
Center researchers looked to address this need with support from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). This project, entitled “Identifying Interventions that Promote Booster Seat Use” sought to:
- Identify factors that influence parents’ current child restraint use behaviors and intentions for future use, and
- Test interventions that address these factors as a means to promote appropriate restraint use behaviors, particularly the use of belt-positioning booster seats (BPB).
Study Approach
This study targeted White, African-American and Hispanic parents with a high school education or less who routinely drive with children between the ages of 4 and 8 years of age. The first wave of focus groups aimed to identify beliefs about and barriers to appropriate restraint use. Themes culled from these focus groups were grouped into advantages to BPB use, barriers to their use, perceived threats and those who influence child restraint decisions. The themes informed the design and selection of interventions that address the concerns of the target audiences with the hope of leading to intentions to and actual use of BPB. The second wave of focus groups involved ranking of the themes followed by review and discussion of interventions, focusing on which messages facilitated behavioral change. The selection of interventions was based on group rankings of themes in order to determine interventions of relevance to the group. Through this method, this study was able to identify and describe parents’:
- child restraint use beliefs, including potential benefits of and threats incurred by using child restraint systems;
- child restraint use barriers;
- suggested intervention strategies to improve child restraint use;
- and insights on methods for implementation of these strategies.
As part of this study, the research team also assessed whether or not differences existed between several different populations of parent drivers.
Study Findings
Data is currently being reviewed from this work, and will be available in 2007.