Development of a child safety seat hassles scale in a largely low-income Latino population

OBJECTIVE. High rates of use of child safety seats have been achieved. A remaining challenge in child passenger safety is to reach the Healthy People 2010 objective of child safety seat use to 100%. Several factors have been reported to influence child safety seat use. A child safety seat Hassles Scale was developed to explore hassles that are associated with child safety seat nonuse. METHODS. Focus groups with violators of the California Child Passenger Safety Law provided data to construct the 29-item Hassles Scale. The scale was used in an interview that was conducted with 132 parents who were cited for violation of the law and whose children were 12 to 47 months of age and weighed 20 to 40 pounds. Interviews were conducted 3 months after parents paid the fine for the citation. Each hassle was rated 0 to 3 on frequency and intensity. Parent report of child safety seat use was obtained. Factor analysis was used to construct subscales. Relationship of subscale frequency and intensity scores to reported child safety seat use was assessed with linear regression. RESULTS. The sample was 86% Latino, 45% Spanish-speaking, and 55% with income