NCJ Number
118584
Date Published
1988
Length
14 pages
Annotation
The conference chairman and the rapporteur interpret the major themes of a conference on "Preventing Motor Vehicle Injuries," convened in Boston by the New England Injury Prevention Research Center on December 10 and 11, 1987.
Abstract
Several major themes emerged from the conference, which drew together scientists, practitioners, and advocates to assess substantive injury control issues and methodological challenges in evaluation research. One theme was that injury control countermeasures that aim to alter human behavior deserve more serious attention than they have received in recent decades. Second, the tension between scientific rigor and political advocacy should not be allowed to disrupt progress toward injury control, since both orientations are compatible. Third, although the injury-control community is represented by persons with different values about the proper role of government, some injury-prevention strategies can be endorsed by the entire community. Finally, analysts responsible for evaluating injury-control policies should do a better job of using alternative statistical methods to examine the robustness of their findings. The conference focused on three policy issues: occupant restraint use, drunk driving, and highway speeds. These concluding comments summarize what the conference discovered about the effectiveness of interventions in these three areas and suggest some logical extensions of the evaluation literature. 9 references.