Telehealth Applied to Deliver In-situ Behavioral Skills Training to Reduce Car Seat Misuse During the Covid-19 Pandemic

  1. James M. DeCarli

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Abstract

Objective

The use of telehealth has been a common approach to deliver health education before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, its ability to apply behavioral skills training (BST) for CRS education has been undocumented. This study assessed the efficacy of telehealth to deliver in-situ behavioral skills training (BST) to teach expectant parents how to install and use their child restraint system (CRS) to reduce misuse and improve retention during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Method

A repeated measures group design was used to evaluate 171 individual participants, in a 37-step CRS task analysis for baseline, BST, and follow-up. Performance across all participants was aggregated for each task analysis. Participants were recruited from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration car seat fitting stations during the Covid-19 pandemic between March through July, 2020.

Results

Baseline results identified significant critical misuse across participants. With BST, delivered with telehealth, misuse decreased by 97% among 37 task objectives. A 2-week follow-up evaluation concluded that 100% of participants retained the skills they mastered during BST.

Conclusions

This study suggests the use of telehealth, as a method of BST delivery for CRS education, is an effective approach to reduce CRS misuse and the burden of child occupant motor vehicle injury. It was found to empower participants and improve their self-confidence, while ensuring the safety of their child occupant. While it was found to be an effective approach for expectant parents during the COVID-19 pandemic, it also has broader child passenger safety program and train-the-trainer implications beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.21.20248679: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: They were provided with an electronic informed consent, demographics form, and a questionnaire of their history of CRS use.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableParticipants: Participants included 87 expectant women in their 37th to 39th week of pregnancy and 84 of their partners or family members for a total of 171 participants.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.12.21.20248679v1 on medRxiv