Childhood unintentional injuries: factors predicting injury risk among preschoolers.

OBJECTIVE To examine the relationships between maternal perceptions of risk, stress, social support, safety-proofing behaviors, supervision practices and unintentional injuries to children under 5 years old. METHODS Household interviews were conducted with 159 mothers who had a preschool-age child. The secondary data were part of a population-based study that collected self-report data and home observational data. Diaries were used for collecting prospective injury data. RESULTS White children whose mothers were unemployed and whose homes needed repair were reported to be at higher injury risk than other children. Predicting a higher injury risk were children's behavioral characteristics as well as their being older than 2.5 years. Maternal social support, stress, and coping variables were not related to injury risk. Maternal perceptions of risk variables interacted with maternal safety behavior variables when predicting injury risk. CONCLUSIONS Childhood injuries are predicted by a set of interrelated sociodemographic, cognitive, behavioral, and child-related factors.