School-age children's attributions about their own naturally occurring minor injuries: A process analysis

Objective: To analyze children's attribution of cause regarding their naturally occurring minor injuries in light of the pre-injury parental acceptability of children's behavior and the emotions children experienced immediately after the event. Method: Sixty-one 8-year-old children were interviewed biweekly for one year about their naturally oc-curring minor injuries. Participants monitored environmental and psychosocial elements of the injuries and later answered questions about the cause of the event. Results: For a total sample of 1,037 minor injuries, children most frequently designated fate as the primary cause. Further analysis revealed that attributions varied by children's pre-injury behavior and post-injury feelings. Children were equally likely to accept primary responsibility or to assign cause to fate when they were engaged in unacceptable behavior before the event. Similarly, children assumed primary responsibility for the injury when they experienced post-injury guilt. No differences in injury attributions were revealed by gender or by the child's frequency of injuries during the year. Conclusions: Results highlight the significance of adult caregiver safety rule creation, endorsement, and ongoing communication for the socialization of children's safe behaviors. Key words: minor injury; child attribution; naturalistic methods. As the leading cause of death for children under the age of 18 (Rodriguez & Brown, 1990), childhood in-juries are one of the most commonly occurring stressful events for families. To protect children from serious harm, parents typically use environ-mental (e.g., childproof medicine containers; Wal-ton, 1982) and behavioral methods of intervention (e.g., child redirection, physically removing child from dangerous situation; Powers & Chapieski, 1986; Scheidt et al., 1988). Although these method