JUDGMENTS REGARDING APPROPRIATE CHILD SUPERVISION TO PREVENT INJURY -THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL RISK AND CHILD AGE

Parents, social service workers, and medical personnel failed to diffe r in the amount of time they estimated that children of 11 differing a ges should be left without adult supervision within 5 different superv ision domains. More hazardous circumstances dramatically reduced the a mount of time respondents said children should be left unsupervised. A mount of unsupervised time increased with age, with clear developmenta l cutoffs that varied by level and type of risk. When the moderate cen ter of the distribution was examined, 3 clear areas of consensus emerg ed. For most domains, constant supervision was recommended for prescho ol children. For early elementary school children, nearly constant (0- 5 min without supervision) or close (0-15 min without supervision) sup ervision was recommended in safer locations, with constant supervision still recommended in high-risk situations. Only with older children w as there an absence of consensus regarding supervision. The implicatio ns of these results for future injury prevention research are discusse d.