Booster Seat Education Program—"Alex Gets a Boost Before Blast Off"
Houston, Texas

Project Type: Booster seat education program for parents and children

State Law at Time of Project Implementation: Texas law did not require booster seat use during project implementation. The CPS law stipulated that children younger than 4 years old or less than 36" tall must be placed in a safety seat. Children younger than 17 years old were required to wear safety belts.

Purpose: To test the effectiveness of a bilingual booster seat education program (for use by CPS technicians and other trained CPS advocates who work with children) in improving knowledge about the importance of booster seat use. To develop and distribute PSAs in Spanish and English to promote booster seat use. To provide pediatricians with a kit for educating parents and children about booster seats.

Primary Audience(s): 4- to 8-year-old children, and parents of young children, and the general community

Project Reach: Houston metropolitan area

Project Description: This three-part project involved the development of a bilingual (Spanish/English) puppet show for classroom instruction by CPS technicians and advocates and a videotape of the puppet show to be used by any teacher. In addition, a booster seat kit was developed for pediatricians (for use with parents and children), and PSAs were developed for English- and Spanish-language television.

Key Project Elements: Though listed sequentially, implementation of these elements occurred at different times throughout the project:

• Safety belt and child safety seat use surveys every 6 months for the duration of the project.

• Development and testing of a classroom puppet show curriculum on booster seats in Spanish and English for 4- to 8-year-olds. The curriculum package included print and video instructor's guides, coloring books, and a videotape showing how the puppet show should be presented.

• Development of a booster seat kit for pediatricians consisting of
  Posters
  Fact sheets for families
  Chart stickers for documenting counseling on child safety seats
  Guidelines for counseling families
  Reward stickers
  Coloring books (Spanish and English)
  Newsletter articles
  Videotape of the puppet show for use in waiting room.

• Provision of guidelines to pediatricians for counseling parents on booster seat use.

• Development of four television PSAs (2 English, 2 Spanish).

• Focus group testing of PSAs with English- and Spanish-speaking parents.

• Distribution of PSAs.

Project Evaluation Methods: Attitudinal and observational surveys were used at the outset of the project to establish baseline measures. Evaluation methods employed were primarily process oriented. Numbers of informational briefings given, numbers of brochures distributed, media appearances, and other process measurements were used as appropriate for each type of outreach and audience. The project used instructor and teacher feedback forms and a pre- and post-test to measure the effectiveness of the puppet show. They did a followup survey with pediatricians and used bounceback cards and a parent survey to measure airtime given to the PSAs.

Classroom Puppet Show Curriculum—This evaluation first examined how easily teachers could assemble the program and learn to use it. Secondly, it examined program effectiveness in teaching 4- to 8-year-old children about car passenger safety.

Pre- and post-tests given to the children immediately before and after the show revealed positive feelings about using booster seats in the future. However, researchers acknowledged that the children seemed confused by the test and some may have answered the way they felt the instructor wanted them to answer.

Booster Seat Kit for Pediatricians—After 1 year, almost 70 percent of the pediatrician practices continued to display the booster seat posters, 93 percent continued to distribute the coloring books, and 27 percent were using the chart stickers to document counseling parents on child passenger safety.

Community Awareness—Although there were no formal assessments of community awareness about the use of booster seats, the television PSAs were aired more than 1,200 times on English- and Spanish-language television. A written survey of 90 Spanish-speaking parents reported that half of the parents (45) indicated that they remembered seeing the PSA on television.

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Key Programmatic Findings and Lessons Learned

• High-quality PSAs are more likely to be played on TV stations.

• Spanish-language stations were particularly community minded and often spent time on stories about child safety.

• Having a cover letter from a high-ranking public official endorsing the PSAs seemed to help get them aired.

• The cost of the classroom program materials ($300) and the time to assemble and prepare them for program delivery could be obstacles for broader use of the program. However, both could be reduced if kits could be produced and the program marketed and distributed on a large scale to CPS technicians.

• For even broader use of the program, a videotaped version of the puppet show was produced. Any interested adult can use the videotape and script to provide a 30-minute class for 4- to 8-year-old children that promotes buckling up, booster seats, and sitting in the back seat. Mass-marketing the videotape would be a less expensive alternative for promoting the program.

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