Comprehensibility of warning symbols for child care products: an in-depth study

Abstract

Child care products are an integral part of children’s developmental processes. It may also inflict accidental injuries to children. Effective warning should result in safe behaviour, leading to reduction in number of accidents. Safety and developmental appropriateness are of utmost importance for child care products. Consumer’s responses to warning are affected by perceived hazardousness which inturn is affected by effectiveness of explicit warning. The study was purposively carried out at Pantnagar on a sample size of 70 i.e. 35 parents and 35 general public using comprehension test. The test was conducted to evaluate the level of comprehensibility of warning symbol for five referents (suffocation, unattended, age, weight, height) with four variants of each referent. The use of symbols along with written text is must to enhance comprehensibility of warning signs. The results of comprehension test reveal that symbols with high level of comprehension for the referents suffocation (91%), unattended (89%), weight (80%), age (89%), and height (89%) meet the acceptance criteria for use as warning symbols as per parents score. Similarly general public had given scores for the referents for suffocation (85%), unattended (85%), weight (91%), age (80%) and height (85%) were found having high comprehensive scores.