A Website to Teach Children Safety With Dogs
Condition: Child Dog Bite Prevention
Intervention: dog safety; transportation safety
Intervention description: use of dog safety website at home for about 2 weeks; use of transportation safety website at home for about 2 weeks
Phase: Phase 1
Study type: Interventional
Primary purpose: Prevention
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Enrollment: 69.0
Sex: All
Minimum age: 4 Years
Maximum age: 6 Years
Healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Summary:

      Dog bites result in over 800,000 doctor/ER visits, 6000 hospitalizations, and a dozen deaths
      each year in the United States. By a large margin, children suffer the highest risk - and
      children typically are bitten by familiar dogs in familiar places. Several programs exist to
      reduce pediatric dog bite risk, but few are empirically-supported or theoretically-motivated.
      None are widely disseminated. This study builds from existing child dog bite prevention
      programs to develop and then evaluate a website to teach children safe interactions with
      dogs. The website will be interactive, entertaining, and engaging, allowing children (target
      ages 4-6) to learn in a technologically-sophisticated and interactive environment. It will be
      developed based in behavioral theory. Hearkening child development theory, it will teach and
      permit practice of cognitive skills that develop in early childhood and are critical to
      safety with dogs: impulse control, perspective taking, and attention to details. Hearkening
      health behavior change theory, the website will help children and their parents perceive
      personal vulnerability to bites, recognize normative behavior to protect themselves, and have
      personal motivation to change previous habits. Overarching the website design will be goals
      to create an engaging and entertaining environment, and to facilitate cognitive and
      behavioral change on the part of both child and parent via multiple mechanisms. Besides
      teaching children, the website will educate parents via an innovative messaging system
      triggered by child attainment of points and "skill levels".

      Following website development, an evaluation study will investigate usability and efficacy of
      the website using a repeated measures pre-test, post-test experimental design. 68 children
      ages 4-6 will be recruited, complete a pre-intervention assessment evaluating knowledge and
      behavior relevant to dog safety via multiple methods, and then be randomly assigned to use
      either the newly-developed dog safety website or a control pedestrian safety website at home
      over the subsequent 2 weeks. Frequent reminders will encourage website use. Following the
      2-week period, all children will return for a post-intervention assessment battery to
      evaluate knowledge and behavior change. Data will be analyzed using descriptive and
      inferential statistics, with primary hypotheses tested using linear mixed models.
    

Eligibility criteria:

        Inclusion Criteria:

          -  parent and child speak English,

          -  exposure to dogs with some frequency,

          -  internet access at home

        Exclusion Criteria:

          -  physical or disability preventing valid participation in study