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.