University of Windsor, Windsor, Canada.
Inj Prev. 2011 Apr;17(2):97-101. doi: 10.1136/ip.2009.024893. Epub 2010 Nov 19.
Canada has a Road Safety Vision of having the safest roads in the world, yet vehicle crashes have remained the leading cause of death of Canadian children for a number of years.
Determine the influence of high rates of non-participation on the estimates for correct use of safety seats for child occupants in vehicles. Examine the impact of three different criteria for determining correct safety seat use on the estimates of correct use of safety seats for children in Canada.
A national child seat safety survey was conducted in 200 randomly selected sites across Canada that included both naturalistic observation of child seat safety use at intersections and a detailed vehicle inspection in nearby parking lots. Non-participation in the detailed parking lot study was high. This study reports on statistical methods for managing high rates of non-response and compared estimates of correct use using three different criteria.
Results revealed that high non-participation rates introduced bias into the raw estimates of correct safety seat use. Correct use estimates also varied substantially depending on which criterion (more stringent or less stringent) for correct use was applied in the analysis. When child age was the only criterion for correct use, estimates were higher than when more stringent criteria of child height and weight were applied to estimate rates of correct use. This study identifies the importance of managing high rates of non-response in safety seat observation studies using statistical techniques. Stringent criteria for correct use may provide more accurate estimates of the correct use of safety seats. Studies of child seat use in vehicles (using voluntary participation) may benefit from the use of naturalistic observation to capture non-participants' use of child occupant restraints, as it may more accurately estimate the rates of correct use in populations.
加拿大制定了道路安全愿景，即拥有世界上最安全的道路，但多年来，车辆碰撞仍然是加拿大儿童死亡的主要原因。
确定高不参与率对车辆中儿童使用安全座椅的正确使用估计的影响。研究三种不同的正确使用安全座椅标准确定方法对加拿大儿童正确使用安全座椅的估计值的影响。
在加拿大 200 个随机选定的地点进行了一项全国性的儿童座椅安全调查，其中包括在十字路口对儿童座椅安全使用情况进行自然观察和在附近停车场进行详细车辆检查。详细停车场研究的不参与率很高。本研究报告了管理高不参与率的统计方法，并比较了使用三种不同标准的正确使用估计值。
结果表明，高不参与率会导致原始正确使用安全座椅的估计值出现偏差。正确使用的估计值也会根据分析中使用的正确使用标准（更严格或更宽松）而有很大差异。当仅以儿童年龄作为正确使用的标准时，估计值高于以儿童身高和体重更严格的标准来估计正确使用的比率时。本研究确定了在使用统计技术进行安全座椅观察研究时管理高不参与率的重要性。严格的正确使用标准可能会提供更准确的安全座椅正确使用估计值。在自愿参与的情况下，对车辆中儿童座椅使用的研究可能会受益于使用自然观察来捕捉非参与者对儿童乘员约束装置的使用情况，因为它可能更准确地估计人群中正确使用的比率。
