Improving Child Restraint Installation

The University of Alabama at Birmingham

Status: Completed

Conditions: Car Seat Installation

Treatments: Behavioral: interactive virtual presence

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03508843

300001220

Details and patient eligibility

About

The investigators will conduct a pre-post trial with 150 parents in rural South Central Montana. The study will recruit families to cooperating community locations (e.g., churches, public libraries) to participate in research evaluating the efficacy of parents installing restraints with guidance from a remotely-located technician using interactive virtual presence. Following informed consent procedures, parents will complete a brief survey on behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions about child safety and restraints while an on-site technician evaluates baseline safety of the restraint. Parents will then engage remotely using their personal smartphone with an off-site certified car seat technician, obtaining advice to install the child restraint properly via the HelpLightning interactive virtual presence app. Following the remote interaction, the on-site technician will again inspect the restraint using the validated checklist (and correct any errors prior to the participant leaving). The overall goal is to demonstrate installation of child restraints can be effectively accomplished to rural populations using interactive virtual presence. The study has 2 specific aims:

Specific Aim 1. Demonstrate technological and behavioral efficacy of providing instructions on child restraint installation remotely to rural populations. Demonstrate >95% of interactions proceed without technical problems, without reports of communication difficulty on either end of the exchange (the parent or the technician), and without interruption.

Specific Aim 2. Identify accuracy of child restraint installation by parents using instructions provided by a remotely-located certified technician via interactive virtual presence. Demonstrate installation in this manner achieves ≥90% accuracy across all aspects of child restraint installation. Demonstrate installation in this manner significantly reduces restraint installation errors.

Enrollment: 150 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• communicate in English
• drive a vehicle with one or more car seats present
• willing to install a car seat into the vehicle

Exclusion criteria

• none

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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150 participants in 1 patient group

interactive virtual presence

Experimental group

Description:

install a car seat using advice from a remotely-located certified car seat technician communicating via interactive virtual presence

Treatment:

Behavioral: interactive virtual presence