Decreasing falls from shopping-carts: An effective pro-active intervention

Introduction: The effects of an intervention designed to decrease the probability of adults placing a child into the basket of a supermarket cart and thus at risk was assessed. Method: A mixed multiple baseline and ABA withdrawal designs across four supermarkets was used to measure intervention effects. It consisted of placing a salient card with a red ban sign attached to the side of the cart opposite the cart handle. The person pushing the cart faced the salient card throughout the shopping trip. An instruction to not place a child in the basket was above the ban sign. Results: Results showed an almost total disappearance of the target behaviour during intervention compared to baseline levels in all four supermarkets only when the intervention was implemented in each store. Baseline levels of the behaviour were recovered after the intervention was removed. Conclusions: It was possible to affect the target behaviour of adults that sets children at risk for accidents. Further research is needed, e.g., the effects of such intervention on the overall rate of yearly shopping cart related accidents and injuries to children if super-markets adopt this intervention. Direct and systematic replications of this experiment, assessment of long-term effects of the intervention, and of variables that may affect the probability of the target behaviour in adults are needed. Practical applications: If the intervention studied here would be adopted in stores where shopping carts are available to customers the rate of cart-related injuries to children could decrease tremendously, even globally.