Preschoolers’ perceptions of their mothers’ and fathers’ reactions to injury-risk behavior
Section snippets
Introduction and background
Unintentional injury is the leading cause of death to children, ages 1–14 in the United States. The prevalence of accidental death follows a specific trend for both males and females (Anderson and Smith, 2005). Unintentional injury is very high from ages 1 to 4, then slowly decreases from ages 5 to 9, and increases again from ages 10 to 14. This widespread problem claims the lives of more children than the next 10 leading causes of death combined. Males are injured 2–4 times more often than
Participants
Seventy-eight (half female) children, ages 36–48 months (Mean = 41.42 months; SD = 3.72) were included in this study. Children were asked to participate in a structured interview. The sample not only consisted of mostly Caucasian children (66.7%), but also included African-American (24.4%), Asian (5.1%), Hispanic (2.6%) children, and 1.2% whose ethnicity was identified as ‘Other’. Most children lived in middle class homes. The family-income distribution for the sample was as follows: 2.6% earned
Desired risk
Two separate 2 × 2 between-subjects ANOVAs were conducted with the two different dependent variables: children's desired level of risk and children's perceived level of risk allowed by parents. The first ANOVA was conducted to evaluate the effect of sex of child and parent target on the child's level of desired risk. There was a significant main effect for sex of child, F(1, 74) = 20.92, p < 0.001. The ANOVA indicated no significant interaction between sex of child and parent target on desired level
Discussion of results
The current study utilized a structured interview approach in which preschool children were asked to imagine themselves in potentially risky play situations and report personally desired risk level and parental allowed risk level. Boys overall reported wanting to take greater risk than girls did. The present findings are consistent with past research that has found that boys engage in more risk than do girls (Hagan and Kuebli, 2007, Matheny, 1991, Morrongiello and Dawber, 1998, Morrongiello and
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all the people who assisted with this project including Sarah Mueller, the artist who drew the line-drawings used in this project. Special thanks also go to Dobbie Herrion and Mitchell Lee for giving the first author the privilege of completing this project as part of her participation in the McNair Scholars Program, which also funded the current project. We also thank all of the personnel from the participating daycares and preschools that served as recruitment
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