Ensure Healthy Development for All Youth: An Exploratory Investigation of Child Safety Seat Use Among Citizens of the United Arab Emirates

Background and Purpose:

As a profession focused on social justice principals, social work must include child safety concerns, including traffic safety, in social welfare and social development practice. Traffic crashes are an emerging concern in the global South, where 91% of road fatalities occur and with children being particularly impacted.

Traffic-related injuries remain a major cause of fatality in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where the fatality rate due to traffic crashes is three times higher than the global average. Among children under 15 years old, traffic related mortality accounted for 63% of child injury deaths in 2012. Anecdotal evidence suggests that few citizen parents place their young children in car safety seats, although this has not been exclusively studied. There is currently no compulsory child safety seat legislation in the UAE. 

This poster presents my quantitative study on car-seat usage among Emirati parents. The purpose of this study was to develop insight into this safety-related behavior.

The objective of the study was to explore road safety culture and norms related to car-seat usage by Emiratis, a topic that has not previously been studied in the UAE.

The research question was, what are the current knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes related to car-seat usage among Emirati parents?

Methods:

Focus groups with Emirati parents informed a survey instrument with questions on knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes related to car-seat usage, using a 5-point Likert scale. A cross-sectional sample was drawn of parents with at least one child under the age of 13. Quantitative analysis was conducted using SPSS version 22.0.

Results:

The sample size was 336. Questions were asked regarding the respondents’ first four children, yielding a total of 1,344 observations.

The percentages of child safety seat usage self-reported by parents were low across all age ranges, with less than 20% of parents self-reporting that they always used a car-seat with their first-born babies from birth to 23 months.

However, when respondents were asked about attitudes regarding car-seat usage, they indicated a favorable attitude towards usage; when responding to the statement “It is safest for a small baby to ride in a rear-facing car seat in the backseat,” over 90% agreed. These positive attitudes did not correlate with behaviors. Parents who reported never using a car- seat when their child was a newborn to 23 months of age, agreed (41.5%) or strongly agreed (44.9%) with the statement “It is safest for a small baby to ride in a rear-facing car seat in the backseat”.

Conclusion and Implications:

The analysis revealed low utilization of car-seats. The mainstream behavior by parents was to not use a car-seat. The findings suggested that the societal norm was also to not use car-seats, despite parents acknowledging their substantial benefits for child protection.

Social work interventions at all levels are urgently needed to increase car-seat usage in the UAE. Previous campaigns in the country have been modeled after those in the West; culturally and locally relevant public information campaigns and intervention efforts, including legislative action, and involving the local community are imperative.