OBJECTIVE: Analyze research methodologies about the utilization of child restraint systems. METHODS: In order to verify child restraint systems used in vehicles that transported children up to four years old to one day care center, during a single study day, four methods were applied: inspection without interview, inspection with interview, self-applied questionnaire and digital filming. These methods were analyzed regarding their acceptance by research subjects, their ability to retrieve data and regarding agreement of the data recovered by the different tools, according to Kappa coefficient. RESULTS: Fifty-six vehicles were observed - 75% of them by filming. The rate of return of the self-applied questionnaire was 70%. The ability to recover data was 99% for inspection without interview, 97% for inspection with interview and 84% for digital filming. Inspection without interview had the better agreement towards digital filming for data retrieving. CONCLUSIONS: The high index of self-applied questionnaire return may be related to characteristics of the studied population. Filming was not suitable due to ethical and technical reasons and considering the high refusal rate, but it was useful to show agreement with inspection without interview of infant retaining device placement. The tools failed to identify the gender of the passengers. The high index of the data recover indicates the ability of the inspection methodologies to explore the use of child restraint system.
accidents, traffic; infant equipment; child restraint system
