Parental injury prevention endeavors: a function of health beliefs?

Investigating parents' beliefs about injury prevention may yield important information for planning preventive interventions. A comprehensive description of parents' beliefs about injury prevention is presented in this study, and effects of child age and sex are described. In addition, a health belief model was successfully used to predict parent-reported teaching of safety skills and preventive environmental interventions. The model successfully cross-validated the prediction in two independent samples. Parents reported low feelings of susceptibility or worry about injury. The variables most associated with parental preventive endeavors were the belief that intervention can avoid injury, a realistically high appraisal of the amount of time involved, and feelings of high knowledge and competence to teach safety skills. Implications of these data for designing more effective behavioral interventions are described.