Teaching young children to cross roads safely.

Road safety education is considered essential to teach children to interact with traffic safely. Many programs, however, do not consider the separate component skills of the road-crossing task, the functional and behavioural factors that may put some children at increased risk, and the most beneficial methods to transfer knowledge to improved behaviour in real-world environments. A targeted and practical training program using a simulated road environment has been developed and evaluated amongst primary school children using a randomised controlled trial.

Factors associated with the premature graduation of children into seatbelts.

This study investigated the factors associated with the premature graduation into seatbelts for Australian children aged 4-11 years. From 699 child restraint use questionnaires, 195 children were identified as meeting the booster seat height-weight criteria (height: 100-145 cm and weight: 14-26 kg). Of these children, 44% were correctly traveling in a booster seat, while 56% had been moved prematurely into a seatbelt.

The impacts of functional performance, behaviour and traffic exposure on road-crossing judgements of young children.

Using data from i) a simulated road-crossing task, ii) a battery of functional performance assessments, and iii) a survey of parents, some factors that may predict poor road-crossing skill were identified. Children aged between 6 and 10 years made road-crossing decisions in a simulated road environment in which time gap and speed of approaching vehicles were manipulated. Functional performance was examined using a range of tools designed to assess cognitive, perceptual, attentional and executive functioning.

A privacy challenge to longitudinal study methods: patient-derived codes.

Recent changes to privacy legislation in Australia have resulted in more stringent requirements with respect to maintaining the confidentiality of patient health information. We describe a method employed to de-identify health information collected in a longitudinal study using codes. Using a patient-derived code that did not change during the life of the study follow-up resulted in errors in a quarter of the follow-up surveys.