Dannenberg (1993)

Aims

To review the impact of the passing of a law requiring cycle helmet wearing in children in Maryland, USA.

Procedures

Quasi-experiment as the IV was naturally occurring = the law

Independent groups design:

1. 47 Schools in Howard County
2. Control group = Baltimore County
3. Control group = Montgomery Country that already had a campaign to promote bicycle safety.

7322 were sent questionnaire, only 3000 were sent back.

• 4-point likert scales were included and parents could help children answer, which gave informed consent
• Participants were asked about their bicycle use one year previous to the research and of the most recent ride.

Findings

• Howard Country reported helmet usage increase from 11.4 to 37.5%
• Montgomery Country reported helmet usage increase from 8.4 to 12.6%
• Baltimore Country reported helmet usage increase from 6.7 to 11.1%
• Younger children = increased usage
• After law was introduced, Howard County had the highest rates of adherence in US.

Conclusions

Passing legislation has more of an affect than educational campaigns alone, and these are not necessarily at all increase health behaviours.

Strengths:

• Useful – the study is useful to inform governments on how to increase health behaviours in individuals and that it may be better to combine passing of laws and media campaigns.
• Concurrent validity – The self-report method used here correlated with an observational study by Cote et al (1992), which found similar rates of cycle helmet usage. Therefore, issues with self-reports may have not risen in the study.
• High generalisability – there were high levels of response, meaning that the results can be applied to the wider population as people from different backgrounds, ages and cultures would have responded.

Weaknesses:

• Quasi-experiments – lack control on extraneous varibales as the experimenter does not manipulate the IV. This makes the study less valid and reliable.
• Ethnocentric bias – the study only considered school children, and therefore cannot represent older populations.
• Low replicability – the study cannot be repeated easily as there would need to be another passing of a similar law. This makes the study less reliable.