A Website to Teach Children Safety with Dogs: Development and Evaluation

描述(由申请者提供)：一个用狗教授儿童安全的网站：发展和评估狗咬伤导致美国每年超过80万名医生/急诊室就诊，6000人住院，12人死亡。在很大程度上，儿童遭受的风险最高-儿童通常会在熟悉的地方被熟悉的狗咬伤。有几个项目可以降低儿科被狗咬伤的风险，但很少有得到经验支持或理论上支持的项目。没有一个是广泛传播的。这项研究建立在现有的儿童狗咬伤预防计划的基础上，开发并评估一个网站，教孩子们与狗安全互动。该网站将具有互动性、娱乐性和吸引力，使儿童(目标年龄为4-6岁)能够在技术先进的互动环境中学习。 它将以行为理论为基础进行开发。听从儿童发展理论，它将教授并允许练习认知技能，这些技能在儿童早期发展起来，对狗的安全至关重要：冲动控制、采取观点和关注细节。根据健康行为改变理论，该网站将帮助孩子和他们的父母感知被咬的个人脆弱性，识别保护他们的规范行为，并有个人动机改变以前的习惯。网站设计的首要目标是创造一个引人入胜和娱乐性的环境，并通过多种机制促进孩子和父母的认知和行为改变。除了教育孩子，该网站还将通过一个创新的信息系统来教育家长，该系统由孩子获得积分和“技能水平”触发。在网站开发之后，一项评估研究将使用重复测量的前测、后测实验设计来调查网站的可用性和有效性。68名4-6岁的儿童将被招募，通过多种方法完成与狗安全相关的知识和行为评估的干预前评估，然后被随机分配到在接下来的两周内使用新开发的狗安全网站或控制行人安全网站。频繁的提醒会鼓励网站的使用。在为期两周的时间内，所有儿童将返回接受干预后评估小组，以 评估知识和行为的变化。数据将使用描述性和推断性统计进行分析，主要假设将使用线性混合模型进行检验。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A Website to Teach Children Safety with Dogs: Development and Evaluation Dog bites result in over 800,000 doctor/ER visits, 6000 hospitalizations, and a dozen deaths each year in the United States. By a large margin, children suffer the highest risk - and children typically are bitten by familiar dogs in familiar places. Several programs exist to reduce pediatric dog bite risk, but few are empirically- supported or theoretically-motivated. None are widely disseminated. This study builds from existing child dog bite prevention programs to develop and then evaluate a website to teach children safe interactions with dogs. The website will be interactive, entertaining, and engaging, allowing children (target ages 4-6) to learn in a technologically-sophisticated and interactive environment. It will be developed based in behavioral theory. Hearkening child development theory, it will teach and permit practice of cognitive skills that develop in early childhood and are critical to safety with dogs: impulse control, perspective taking, and attention to details. Hearkening health behavior change theory, the website will help children and their parents perceive personal vulnerability to bites, recognize normative behavior to protect them, and have personal motivation to change previous habits. Overarching the website design will be goals to create an engaging and entertaining environment, and to facilitate cognitive and behavioral change on the part of both child and parent via multiple mechanisms. Besides teaching children, the website will educate parents via an innovative messaging system triggered by child attainment of points and "skill levels". Following website development, an evaluation study will investigate usability and efficacy of the website using a repeated measures pre-test, post-test experimental design. 68 children ages 4-6 will be recruited, complete a pre-intervention assessment evaluating knowledge and behavior relevant to dog safety via multiple methods, and then be randomly assigned to use either the newly-developed dog safety website or a control pedestrian safety website at home over the subsequent 2 weeks. Frequent reminders will encourage website use. Following the 2-week period, all children will return for a post-intervention assessment battery to evaluate knowledge and behavior change. Data will be analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, with primary hypotheses tested using linear mixed models.