MODEL OF PARENT'S PERCEPTION OF THEIR CHILDREN CAPABILITY FOR SAFE TRAFFIC BEHAVIOUR

Accidents of all kinds, especially traffic ones, are threatening children at any moment. Parents are often not aware of their capabilities and overestimate their ability to join traffic independently. The socioecological approach in conceptualizing and undertaking prevention of children's accidents is discussed. The importance of integrating populational and personal knowledge with information about children's current actions in caregivers reasoning about prevention is stressed. The coordination of this information leads to particular preventive actions regarding children. In this research the casual model of parents beliefs about their children's capabilities regarding traffic behavior is discussed. Parents of children in critical years (older kindergarten children and lower primary school pupils) were questioned about different aspects of the children's safety behavior, about family situations, geographical situation in the neighborhood, traffic conditions and demography, (e.g., age, education, gender) as well as about their willingness to let their children join traffic independently. With the help of LISREL, casual relationships between variables were analyzed. Results are presented and discussed in the frame of current theories. Importance of the results for traffic education is considered as well.