Brazilian mothers' knowledge about home dangers and safety precautions: an initial evaluation

Worldwide, unintentional injuries are a major cause of emergency department visits, hospitalization, permanent disability, and death among children. Today, unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death in children aged 1-14 years in South American countries, including Brazil and Argentina. The majority of unintentional injuries happen in or near the home, and researchers have pointed out that prevention efforts should include the active involvement of parents and caregivers. The ability to identify dangerous situations, products, and behaviors, and to provide suitable precautions, is important if parents are to provide a safe environment for their children as well as for themselves. Despite the overwhelming evidence concerning the relevance of the topic, few studies have focused on parenting knowledge about home safety. This is especially true in developing countries. The present work had three objectives. First, we evaluated the cultural adequacy of the illustrated version of the Home Inventory for Dangers and Safety Precautions (HIDSP-4) in a Brazilian context. Second, we evaluated Brazilian mothers' knowledge about home dangers and safety precautions (based on a convenience sample of 96 mothers resident in Rio de Janeiro). Finally, we analyzed associations between scores in the HIDSP-4 and sociodemographic variables (e.g., educational attainment, socioeconomic status (SES)). It was verified that the inventory suitably covers home dangers identified by Brazilian epidemiological studies on unintentional injuries, and presented satisfactory psychometric properties and cultural adequacy for Brazilian contexts. Brazilian mothers identified 62% of the dangers presented in the illustrations and provided suitable precautions for 26% of the dangers. These results indicate that mothers had some difficulty in identifying home dangers and even more difficulty providing suitable precautions for prevention or remediation of those dangers. Our correlation and regression analyses revealed that most of the variation of knowledge concerning dangers and safety precautions is not explained by variation in the educational attainment and SES of the mothers. Future directions are explored.