Measuring behaviours for escaping from house fires: use of latent variable models to summarise multiple behaviours

Background: This paper reports the development and testing of a construct measuring parental fire safety behaviours for planning escape from a house fire. Methods: Latent variable modelling of data on parental-reported fire safety behaviours and plans for escaping from a house fire and multivariable logistic regression to quantify the association between groups defined by the latent variable modelling and parental-report of having a plan for escaping from a house fire. Data comes from 1112 participants in a cluster randomised controlled trial set in children’s centres in 4 study centres in the UK. Results: A two class model provided the best fit to the data, combining responses to five fire safety planning behaviours. The first group (‘more behaviours for escaping from a house fire’) comprised 86 % of participants who were most likely to have a torch, be aware of how their smoke alarm sounds, to have external door and window keys accessible, and exits clear. The second group (‘fewer behaviours for escaping from a house fire’) comprised 14 % of participants who were less likely to report these five behaviours. After adjusting for potential confounders, participants allocated to the ‘more behaviours for escaping from a house fire group were 2.5 times more likely to report having an escape plan (OR 2.48; 95 % CI 1.59–3.86) than those in the “fewer behaviours for escaping from a house fire” group. Conclusions: Multiple fire safety behaviour questions can be combined into a single binary summary measure of fire safety behaviours for escaping from a house fire. Our findings will be useful to future studies wishing to use a single measure of fire safety planning behaviour as measures of outcome or exposure. Trial registration number: NCT 01452191. Date of registration 13/10/2011