Validity of parent's self-reported responses to home safety questions

The aim of the study was to describe the validity of parent's self-reported responses to questions on home safety practices for children of 2-4 years. A cross-sectional validation study compared parent's self-administered responses to items in the Home Injury Prevention Survey with home observations undertaken by trained researchers. The relationship between the questionnaire and observation results was assessed using percentage agreement, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and intraclass correlation coefficients. Percentage agreements ranged from 44% to 100% with 40 of the total 45 items scoring higher than 70%. Sensitivities ranged from 0% to 100%, with 27 items scoring at least 70%. Specificities also ranged from 0% to 100%, with 33 items scoring at least 70%. As such, the study identified a series of self-administered home safety questions that have sensitivities, specificities and predictive values sufficiently high to allow the information to be useful in research and injury prevention practice.