Knowledge, attitude and practice on car safety seats: a cross-sectional survey of Armenian parents living in Yerevan

Abstract

Background: Almost 150 children are treated for road traffic injuries in emergency departments, every hour in the world. World Health Organization states that child restraints can reduce infants’ death by approximately 70%, and death among children by up to 80% if the restraints are correctly installed and used. Currently, in the absence of compulsory child safety seat legislation in Armenia only parents are responsible for their child passenger road safety. Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the knowledge, attitude and practice of Armenian parents regarding car safety seats and to find out factors associated with car safety seat use.Methods: Cross-sectional study design was utilized. A survey with self-administered questionnaire was conducted among the parents of children 0-6 years old living in Yerevan city, Armenia.Two stage cluster sampling was performed. In the first stage, kindergartens were chosen as clusters by simple random sampling. During the second stage from each of the selected kindergartens the parents were chosen based on convenience sampling. Binary logistic regression was performed to identify variables significantly associated with the car safety seat use. Multivariable logistic regression explored independent associations of variables with the CSS use. Backward elimination approach helped to develop final predictive model for CSS use. Results: The final sample comprised of 263 parents from 28 public and 5 private kindergartens from Yerevan. The mean percent scores for the knowledge and attitude regarding car safety seats was 65.0% and 71.0 %, respectively. From the total sample 26.6 % of the parents have been categorized as CSS users. In the final adjusted analysis child age, attitude score, knowledge score, usual driver’s seat belt wearing status, and average monthly expenditures were significantly associated with CSS use. Conclusion: This study was the first-time exploration of Armenian parents’ knowledge, attitude and practice of CSS-s. The findings from our study might serve as a starting point for further research on proper use of CSS-s among Armenian parents not only in Yerevan, but across the country. The study revealed many important aspects of parental knowledge and attitude toward CSS, which might be used for fruitful interventions to increase the knowledge and actual use of car safety seats in Armenia.