National Survey of the Use of Booster Seats

Responding to the National Survey of the Use of Booster Seats (NSUBS) is on a voluntary basis. All potential survey respondents are asked, in accordance with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requirements, for their voluntary participation in the survey. No individual is required to respond to the survey questions, and any participant can refuse to respond to any singular question without consequence. None of their responses will be publically disclosed and no personally identifying information will be collected. That is, their participation is not required to obtain or retain any benefits. The collection is observing, reporting, and is a survey. The collection will be done every other year. The information that would be recorded, maintained in records, and disclosed is intended to provide the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) with estimates of child restraint use. It is used by the Agency to design outreach programs to help ensure that more of the nation’s children are using restraints that will protect them in motor vehicle crashes. The survey data will allow programs to better reach the caretakers whose children are unrestrained or not using the best restraint choice for their children’s sizes. The findings may also be of interest to state legislatures wanting to strengthen their child restraint laws by enacting mandatory or enhanced booster seat use provisions. Information collected would be received by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration with eventual public reporting of survey results. These files will provide NHTSA with survey data, auxiliary information on state laws, derived analytic variables, and full sample and replicate weights that can be used to create National estimated of child safety restraint use. The survey was previously approved as OMB Control No. 2127-0644 (current expiration Date: 5/31/19). NSUBS was designed to estimate booster seat use among 4- to 7-year-old children. In addition, the survey provides restraint use estimates for all children under 13, race and ethnicity breakouts of restraint use among all occupants in a vehicle, and estimates of the extent to which children are “prematurely transitioned” from one restraint type to others that are inappropriate for their age as well as height and weight. The survey produces bi-annual estimates of: • Restraint use by Age Group • Restraint use by Weight Group • Restraint use by Height Group • Restraint use by OMB Race/Ethnicity The current estimates are based upon observations of restraint use for all passenger vehicle occupants included in the survey, and brief interviews with the vehicle drivers or other knowledgeable adults to determine the age, height, weight, race, and ethnicity of the child occupants. For the 2019 NSUBS and future iterations of the survey NHTSA would like to ask the adult drivers their age in order to analyze the impact of driver age on driver seat belt use and child restraint use. The addition of this question will not impact the cost to the respondent or the annualized cost to the Federal Government.

The latest form for National Survey of the Use of Booster Seats expires 2022-06-30 and can be found here.