Safety-awareness, Safety-practice and Accident Occurrence among Elementary Students

초등학생의 안전의식 및 실천정도와 안전사고 발생 실태

The purpose of this study was to measure safety-awareness among elementary students, identify their safety-practices and actual status of accidents. The study was also done to acquire basic information on safety education to help students be more aware of safety, and more active in accident-prevention activities. A random sample was taken of 763 5th and 6th grade students in 4 different elementary schools in Seoul. Of the 735 questionnaires collected, 684 were complete and were used in the analysis. SPSS was used to analyze the questionnaires. The results are summarized as follows. First, the overall safety-awareness score was relatively high at 139.06 of a maximum of 164. and respondents were most conscious of the section on Home Safety. Second, the safety-practices of the respondents was at the middle level with a mean score of 56.01 of a maximum of 80. The factors affecting the safety-practice of the respondents were education of their parents, recognized learning proficiency, awareness of need for safety education, and level of safety-education conducted by parents. Third, $53.4\%$ of the respondents had experienced one or more accidents during the past year. Most of the accidents occurred during play and recreation and home accidents were the most frequently reported accidents. The risk factors related to the occurrence of accidents were gender, relationship with friends, recognized learning proficiency, and awareness of traffic safety. Forth, higher safety-awareness was found to be directly related to higher safety-practices. Respondents with lower safety-awareness reported higher rate of accidents. In view of the results so far achieved, habituation and formation of safety-oriented actions among students are highly required to prevent accidents. In order to do that, development of safety-awareness and in-life enforcement of safety-practice need to come first.