Risk management is a major responsibility of parents in providing for safety of their young children. This involves recognizing who is at risk and under what conditions they are at risk, accessing and utilizing safety devices, structuring the environment to minimize risks and providing supervision. The extent to which parents take appropriate preventive measures depends upon parents' perception of injuries and injury risks, as well as motivations for action within a sociocultural context. This study builds upon the investigators' previous studies documenting differentials in risk of injury and causes of injury between recent immigrant Mexican, acculturated Mexican American and non-Hispanic white children. The proposed study will merge ethnographic and epidemiologic research designs, methods of data collection and analysis, and interpretive insights to provide an improved understanding of the factors underlying childhood injuries in these populations.

The overall goals of this project are to test the following hypotheses: 1) parents provide reliable and accurate information and facts in respect to variables used in injury research; 2) parental beliefs and perceptions regarding injury causation, responsibility, risks and effective injury prevention measures differ from the actual situations in which childhood injuries occur; 3) parental perceptions and attitudes regarding injury causation, responsibility and effective injury prevention measures differ by ethnicity and level of acculturation; and, 4) differences and attitudes by ethnicity and level of acculturation result in differences in rates and leading causes of injury.

This study has three components. The first will adapt, link and utilize epidemiologic data from the investigators' studies to address the strengths and limitations of various data sources, will examine the degree of ecologic bias in small area analyses using census data, and will develop an epidemiologic model of childhood injury. The second component will determine cultural values, beliefs, perceptions and knowledge regarding injury risk, supervision, and capabilities of children by acculturation and ethnicity using ethnographic methodology. the third component will compare the ethnographic data with the injury epidemiology data from the same population.

By using this combined approach, epidemiology will provide quantitative estimates of risk while ethnography will explain culturally embedded risk factors and perceptions and their potential significance to the etiology and prevention of childhood injuries. The results of this research will define more precisely who should be targeted for specific interventions and how the interventions should be structured to maximize their effectiveness.

R01HD034483

1996-09-01

2001-08-31