Mothers' home-safety practices for preventing six types of childhood injuries: what do they do, and why?

OBJECTIVE To identify determinants of mothers' home-safety practices for preventing six types of common injuries to children (burns, poisoning, drowning, cuts, strangulation/suffocation/choking, and falls). METHODS Home interviews were conducted with mothers of children 19-24 and 25-30 months old about home-safety practices. For each of 30 safety precautions to prevent these six types of injuries, mothers indicated whether or not they engaged in the practice, and explained why. RESULTS Regression analyses revealed both common and unique determinants of mothers' home-safety practices to prevent these six types of home injuries. For burns, cuts, and falls, beliefs that child characteristics and parent characteristics elevated the child's risk of injury were the key determinants of the mother's engaging in precautionary measures. For drowning, poisoning, and suffocation/strangulation/choking, health beliefs also contributed to predict mothers' practices, including beliefs about potential injury severity and extent of effort required to implement precautionary measures. CONCLUSIONS The factors that motivated mothers to engage in precautionary measures at home varied depending on the type of injury. Intervention programs to enhance maternal home-safety practices will need to target different factors depending on the type of injury to be addressed.