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The Diabetes Educator

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Health Education & Behavior
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Seat Belt Use Laws: The Influence of Data on Public Opinion

Anna P. Schenck, MSPH

Lineberger Cancer Research Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Carol W. Runyan, MPH, PhD

Department of Social and Administrative Medicine, University of North Carolina

Jo Anne L. Earp, ScD, PhD

Department of Health Education, University of North Carolina

Motor vehicle crashes are a major public health problem. Mandatory seat belt use laws capable of lessening the highway death and injury toll have recently received a great deal of public attention.

Public opinions toward such laws were assessed in a representative sample of 410 North Carolina drivers. In our experimental design, subjects were randomly assigned to receive one of six types of data expressing the effectiveness of the proposed mandatory and the current voluntary policies. A comparison group received no data. Exposure to data about the effec tiveness of the proposed seat belt law was strongly predictive of policy preferences, though the specific type of data did not appear to have an influence. Additional characteristics predictive of policy preferences included attitudes toward other government regulations, beliefs about the effectiveness of seat belts, and personal seat belt use. The findings suggest that health educators need to continue to provide the public with data about potential safety regulations. Furthermore, health educators, to be more effective, should target information toward certain critical beliefs such as those about the relative effectiveness of a particular policy.

Health Education & Behavior, Vol. 12, No. 4, 365-377 (1985)
DOI: 10.1177/109019818501200403
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