Abstract:
The major purpose of the study was to determine the practices for accident prevention in the urban areas of Plateau State. Specifically, the study was designed to identify the common sources of accident in urban households; determine accident prevention practices within households; identify factors that could hinder the adoption of accident prevention practices; and identify the ways of enhancing the adoption of the accidents prevention practices among urban households. The area of study was Plateau State. A descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. Four research questions were generated and three null hypotheses were tested at significant level of 0.05.The population for the study was made up of 490,643 households. The sample for the study was 1,008 homemakers drawn from the population through a multi-stage sampling technique. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts. Twenty copies of the questionnaire were administered to homemakers in order to determine the internal consistency and stability of the instrument. Cronbach Alpha reliability method was used and it yielded reliability coefficients of 0.92, 0.93, 0.89, 0.70 and an overall value of 0.70. Data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the four research questions. t-test was used to test null H02and H03, while Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to test H01 at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed seventy-seven common sources of accident among urban households with a grand mean rating of 3.88. Respondents rated ninety-one accident prevention practices of households in urban areas with a grand mean of 4.24. Twenty-eight factors that could hinder the adoption of accident prevention practice were identified with a grand mean rating of 3.89. Fourteen ways of enhancing the adoption of accident prevention practices within urban households were identified and had a grand mean rating of 4.18. The results showed that there was no significant difference in the mean ratings of homemakers on the common sources of accident based on the sizes of household; therefore, H01was accepted at 0.05 level of significance. There was no significant difference in the mean responses of homemakers on the practices for preventing accident among households based on ownership status; hence, H02 was accepted at 0.05 level of significance. And also, there was no significant difference between the mean responses of educated homemakers and non-educated homemakers on the factors that could hinder the adoption of accident prevention practices among households; therefore, H03 was accepted at 0.05 level of significance. Based on the research findings, eight major recommendations were made and some of these included: intensification of research activities and documentation of findings on sources, types and victims of home accident in both urban and rural areas; appointing of safety committees at all levels and tiers of government to monitor health and sanitation issues in addition to the monthly environmental sanitation programmes already in existence in many states of the federation. The habit of maintenance culture should be developed and enforced in both urban and rural areas and special equipment and work surfaces should be constructed to aid the physically challenged individuals to cope with work in all activity areas in order to prevent household related accidents.
