The effectiveness of fire safety education interventions for young people who set fires: A systematic review

Abstract

Youth firesetting is an enduring problem that results in significant economic and personal harm. Fire safety education (FSE) is the most commonly provided intervention for youth firesetting internationally. However, no systematic review exists which synthesises the evidence base on the effectiveness of FSE as an intervention for youth firesetting. The current study aims to address this gap in the literature by conducting a systematic review of the research that examines the effectiveness of FSE interventions for young people who set fires and the quality of these evaluation studies. ProQuest Central (all databases), Dimensions, Web of Science, PubMed, PsycINFO, GoogleScholar, and the National Emergency Training Center library were searched for relevant articles. Email requests were also sent to national and international professional organizations and key professionals in the field, requesting unpublished or internal evaluations that met the inclusion criteria. The methodological quality of each study was assessed using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (Hong et al., 2018). Twenty-three manuscripts were identified that met the inclusion criteria. All studies reported FSE interventions to show some effectiveness, however, the reliability of these findings was significantly reduced by weak methodological designs. Further research is needed to determine the effectiveness of FSE interventions for youth firesetting. • Youth firesetting is a high incidence high harm behaviour. Fire safety (FSE) is the most common intervention provided to address youth firesetting. • Findings suggest tentative support for FSE interventions in improving fire-safety knowledge and/or reducing firesetting in youth. • Yet, conclusions are weakened by low quality methodologies and poor outcome measures. • Further rigorous evaluation of FSE interventions is urgently needed, particularly high-quality discriminant studies (e.g., quasi-experimental and RCT's). • Further research is critical to improve interventions for youth firesetting and reduce the incidence and harm associated with this behaviour.