Developing an Injury Prevention Simulation Game to Better Engage Parents in Services -Home Safety Hero

Overview

This study will test the effectiveness of novel technology-based game to teach parents and parents to be home safety skills. These include the identification of home child injury risks under two conditions (with and without distraction) and how to resolve these risks to better protect preschool children from injuries. Few empirically validated home safety interventions exist and the best ones involve individual home visitors. These and others that use didactic instruction or provision of written material have poor response from low socioeconomic parents who are less literate and more resistant to outsiders entering their homes. The use of a computer game to provide education in this area is being tested for effectiveness and the game's engagement will also be examined. Given cognitive problems in parents have been linked in the PI's work to child neglect (e.g., poor child supervision), links of performance on the game to cognitive capacities will also be examined in a preliminary way.

The study will compare a group of parents and parents to be who play the game multiple times (n=15) to a wait list group (n=15) who just play it once. The study will examine reaction times to identification and resolution of the risks overall and by category of risk (e.g., poisoning, burns, suffocation, etc.). The study will also examine failures on levels of the game which are graded for difficulty. The game was designed for low failure rate to increase engagement and to improve motivation. Changes in the participants' perception of efficacy in preventing injuries to children and their engagement with the game (using a standardized usability survey) will be examined. The study will also examine the role of experience with the use of technology and cognitive capacities in relation to performance and pre-post changes with multiple plays of the game.