Self-reported safety belt use among emergency department patients in Boston, Massachusetts

BMC Public Health

Table 1 Demographic data, response to global and multiple measures of safety belt use among urban emergency department patients

Variable	Total Sample N (%)	SBU 'Always', by Single Measure of Safety Belt Use N (%)	Chi Square	P value	SBU 'Always', by Multple Measure of Safety Belt Use N (%)	Chi Square	P value
Gender
Male	197 (52)	80 (42)	15.7	<0.001	35 (36)	14.4	<0.001
Female	182 (48)	111 (58)			63 (64)
Age
18–24	49 (13)	26 (14)	7.68	0.958	17 (17)	2.63	0.622
25–34	98 (26)	46 (24)			23 (23)
35–44	108 (28)	51 (27)			28 (29)
45–54	81 (21)	42 (23)			19 (19)
55 or older	46 (12)	27 (14)			11 (11)
Race
African American	183 (48)	91(47)	7.40	0.116	55 (53)	3.05	0.549
Asian	10 (3)	6 (3)			1 (1)
Native American	2 (1)	2 (1)			1 (1)
White	151 (40)	70 (36)			37 (38)
Other	34 (9)	23 (12)			7 (7)
Ethnicity
Hispanic or Latino	77 (20)	50 (26)	14.9	0.002	23 (23)	2.02	0.568
Cape Verdean	19 (5)	9 (5)			3 (3)
Haitian	20 (5)	15 (8)			4 (4)
None of These	264 (69)	118 (61)			68 (69)
Education
< High School	27 (7)	16 (8)	4.77	0.312	7 (7)	7.32	0.12
Some High School	55 (15)	22 (12)			8 (8)
High School/GED	136 (36)	65 (34)			32 (33)
Some College	91 (24)	50 (26)			27 (27)
College Graduate	70 (18)	38 (20)			24 (24)

SBU = Safety belt use
Single Measure of Safety Belt Use = Respondents were asked the following question: "Think about the times you've ridden in a car in the past 30 days. Overall, how often did you wear a seatbelt?" The overall outcome of analysis, safety belt use, was determined by the frequency of participants that answered 'always' on this question.
Multiple Measure of Safety Belt Use = Respondents were asked a series of situation-specific transportation questions (highway travel, local road travel, daytime travel, travel at night, driving a car, front seat passenger, back seat passenger, short trips of 10 minutes or less, and trips longer than 10 minutes). We classified safety belt use via the Multiple Measure as a response of 'always' to all nine scenarios.

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