Manipulating children's exposure to social norms can be an effective strategy for reducing injury-risk behaviors even when they are in an elevated positive mood state.

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Objective This research examined whether the positive effects of a peer-communicated social norm that reduces risk-taking behaviors persist over time and if a reminder of this peer-communicated safety message has any impact on this outcome. Methods Positive mood in 7- to 9-year olds was induced experimentally and risk taking intentions and behaviors were measured when the child was in a positive and neutral mood state and after they had been exposed to either a safety or neutral peer-communicated social norm message. A few weeks later, half of the participants who experienced the safety social norm message were exposed to a reminder of this message via a slogan and risk-taking measures were taken again when in a heightened positive mood state. Results Exposure to a safety norm successfully counteracted the increase in risk taking associated with a positive mood state. These effects persisted for several weeks regardless of whether the children were exposed to a reminder. Conclusion Manipulating peer social norms holds promise as an approach to produce reductions in children’s risk taking and these effects persist at least over several weeks.

feasibility of facilitator implementation, and to determine practicality of a PRE/POST questionnaire as a future method to evaluate efficacy of this newly adapted program. Parents provided ratings of the program (e.g., helpfulness, utility, increase in knowledge, would they recommend the program), and facilitators provided ratings and written responses (e.g., preparation, clarity, improvements that could be made). Results suggest that overall both parents and facilitators rated the program positively. Major themes identified by facilitators suggest that the questionnaire should be significantly shortened and simplified to account for low literacy in this population specifically. Additionally, the limits of existing session length for this community programming is a barrier to implementing a thorough questionnaire evaluation. Moving forward, literacy level will be reduced overall, and alternatives to a questionnaire format will be explored. Conducting research within community setting constraints is discussed. This research has identified what remains to be addressed for the purposes of a large scale evaluation of a well-received program. This program has the potential to provide large scale publicly funded parenting programs with evidence based intervention to reduce the rates of unintentional injury in children among vulnerable parenting populations.

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