Socialization Strategies, Temperament and Childhood Injuries Final Report

摘要

This descriptive, longitudinal study was designed to add to our understanding of the mechanisms through which mothers can protect their children from injury. We conducted interviews and observations of a diverse sample of mothers and their 3-year old children. We also conducted telephone follow-up interviews one year later and abstracted the medical records of children for injuries from birth-age 4. Our research addressed four questions (and 10 specific hypotheses): (1) Is child temperament related to the frequency of child injuries (2) Are maternal beliefs and psychological resources related to the frequency of child injuries (3) Is there an interaction between child temperament and mothers' monitoring and socialization strategies in the prediction of childhood injuries (4) Do mothers' monitoring and socialization strategies partially mediate the relationship between beliefs and rule setting, psychological resources and child injuries. Between September 2002 and November 2003, we recruited, screened and enrolled a demographically diverse sample of 278 mothers and their children. 264 of these mothers participated in our follow-up. The sample was stratified to ensure participation of both poor and non-poor majority mothers and poor and non poor minority mothers. The sample included working and non-working, married and unmarried mothers, those who used day care and those who did not.