Abstract:
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The National Digital Car Seat Check Form (NDCF) is a database on use and misuse of child safety seats in the United States, compiled from detailed car seat check reports submitted by certified child passenger safety (CPS) technicians. A major goal of the NDCF is to make data more accessible to the CPS community. To that end, all NDCF users have access to personalized interactive dashboards that display summary statistics on their submitted data, as well as to a summary national dashboard.
The NDCF contains over 60,000 records as of the end of 2021 and continues to grow; however, since submission is voluntary, it is not a representative sample of children traveling in vehicles in the United States. It can be challenging to properly interpret statistics based on non-representative data. In this presentation, we use matched county-level Census data to compare characteristics of children who are well-represented in the NDCF vs. children who are under-represented, both at the national and sub-national levels. We provide practical recommendations on how policymakers, child passenger safety advocates, and technicians can most effectively use NDCF data for decisionmaking.
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