Use of Child Safety Seats: Education Programs When Used Alone

Task Force Finding*

Education programs provide information and teach skills to parents, children, or professional groups about the use of child safety seats. Information provides the basic foundation for moving people toward behavior change and can enhance skills, thus enabling behavior change. Providing information alone is rarely sufficient for sustained behavior change, but it is a central and necessary component of other interventions, such as community campaigns, distribution programs, and incentive programs.

The Task Force identified three qualifying studies that evaluated the effect of perinatal safety seat education programs on parents’ later use of the seats for their children, one qualifying study evaluating the effect of a preschool education program on children’s safety seat use, and two qualifying studies evaluating the effect of professional education on provider and system performance in health care systems and law enforcement, respectively.

Therefore, on the basis of the (1) small number of available studies, and (2) variability in the interventions evaluated, insufficient evidence exists to assess the effectiveness of education programs alone in increasing child safety seat use.

*From the following publication:

Task Force on Community Preventive Services. Recommendations to reduce injuries to motor vehicle occupants: increasing child safety seat use, increasing safety belt use, and reducing alcohol-impaired driving. [PDF - 78KB] Am J Prev Med 2001;21(4S):16–22.

Review completed: June 1998