Children's Environments, Accidents, and Accident Prevention

A Conceptual Analysis

Abstract

The paper reviews different conceptualisations of how the environment and people's behavior are interrelated. One such conceptualisation, in which the environment is conceived as the context for individuals acting with the aim of achieving goals is brought to bear on childhood accidents, their causes and prevention. From this view, it follows that there may be accident-prone interactions between children, caregivers and environments, indicating dysfunctions of the system of which these subsystems form the parts. How such accident-prone interactions may depend on caregivers1 and children's actions (or action plans) when they lack appropriate knowledge is noted. Safety-education for adults and children, alone, cannot however, be a solution unless the environment is reasonably safe and stimulating to the child, comprehend able and controllable to the caregiver and the child. Finally, methodological considerations in research of the role of behavioral factors in childhood accidents are discussed.

Two main, long-term goals of child care can be distinguished: the goal of promoting the child's development (physically as well as mentally), and the goal of protecting the child from harm. Psychological research has given more emphasis to the first goal by asking questions about what factors interfere with normal development, and the conditions favorable for cognitive growth, or growth in other areas.

Today the most frequent harm to children is accidental injuries. Fifty years ago, diseases ranked clearly higher than accidents as a cause of death to children. However, due to their effective control, the death rate from* disease has declined markedly, whereas that from accidental injuries has not (Baker, O'Neil, & Kapf, 1984). This challenge has not been responded to by developmental and environmental psychologists (Fischhoff, Svenson, & Slovic, 1985; Valsiner, 1985). The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the relationships between children's environments and the negative consequence of accidental injuries, which may lay the foundation for futurenvironmental research. A narrow focus is not desirable; childhood accidents are clearly a mult if ace ted problem which cannot successfully be approached from only one perspective