Knowledge of Accident Prevention Among Parents of Young Children in Nine Massachusetts Towns

Knowledge concerning childhood accident prevention was assessed by means of developmentally oriented safety surveys that parents completed during their child's health maintenance visits at primary care sites. A total of 1,493 parents in urban, suburban, and rural Massachusetts communities participated. The questionnaires were administered between September 1980 and June 1982 to 512 parents of infants under 9 months and 981 parents of children aged 9 months through 5 years. Parents in all nine localities needed to learn how to prevent their children from getting burns. A variety of community-specific needs for other types of preventive behavior were also identified. Recognition of these educational needs is important because individual counseling or community education programs may be the only feasible preventive measures for certain injuries, particularly those that require parents to make substantial behavioral changes.