Behavioral and psychosocial correlates of road traffic injuries: evidence from a nationwide study on Chinese undergraduates

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence and behavioral and psychosocial correlates of road traffic injuries (RTIs) among Chinese university students.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among fifty universities in China, using a multi-stage sampling methodology. The participants were asked to report their RTIs in the past year. The chi-square test and binary logistic regression analysis were utilized to identify factors associated with RTIs, including specific types of RTIs.

Results: Among the 11,770 participants, a total of 1,482 university students reported at least one RTI yielding an overall weighted injury prevalence of 12.96% over the past year. Estimated weighted prevalence by type was 6.10%, 5.94%, 5.12%, and 5.35% for automobile (car, truck, or bus), bicycle, motorcycle, and pedestrian injuries, respectively. Logistic regression analysis found that students who studied at low-level universities, smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol, slept less than 7 hours, went to bed after 12:00 am, or students with psychological distress were more likely to experience overall and four types of RTIs. Students who studied in the eastern universities had a higher likelihood of automobile injury, motorcycle injury and pedestrian injury than those who studied in western universities.

Conclusions: Several critical factors associated with RTIs were identified. These findings have implications for the design and implementation of RTI prevention and interventions programs targeted at university students.

Keywords:

• Road traffic injuries
• behavioral factors
• perceived stress
• psychological distress
• Chinese university students

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our local teams from the “Building advocacy capacity for tobacco control in medical universities in China (Bloomberg global tobacco control project)” project for organizing the data collection.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This study was partly funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71490733), and Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province of China (Grant No. 2018A030307002).