Parents May Over-Report Use of Home Safety Interventions

In a study from 2003, researchers from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that parents may over-report the use of home safety interventions. The study involved comparing parental reports of safety practices with actual in-home observations in an urban teaching hospital's pediatric residents' continuity clinic panel. The panel consisted mostly of African American single mothers, with about one-third having less than a high school education and more than one-third having a household income of less than $5,000. In-home assessments were conducted in 70% of participating families, which included 67% of intervention families and 74% of control group families. The study revealed that while smoke alarms were present in 96% of homes, only about half were functional, and only 22% of homes had a working smoke alarm on each floor. Less than 31% of homes had stairs protected by gates or doors, and the presence of syrup of ipecac was significantly higher in the control group than in the intervention group. The authors concluded that parental reports of safety measures may be acceptable for research comparisons but cautioned that parents generally over-report the use of safety practices. Therefore, clinicians should be cautious about parental reports, and researchers should use observation to determine the actual prevalence of safety-measure use.