- Author
- Smith, C. L.
- Title
- Smoke Detector Operability Survey Report on Findings (Revised).
- Coporate
- Consumer Product Safety Commission, Washington, DC
- Report
- Revised, October 1994, 85 p.
- Keywords
- smoke detectors | surveys | human response
- Identifiers
- description of the survey and sample; households with smoke detectors; characteristics of smoke detectors in use; respondents observations and actions concerning smoke detectors; results of field operability testing; conditions of inoperative detectors that were noted by field interviewers; problems reported by consumers; sample collection and engienering analysis; survey questionnaire; engineering analysis report; summary of smoke detector code provisions for localities surveyed
- Abstract
- The Smoke Detector Operability Survey was done to fill a need for new field data on the numbers and types of smoke detectors installed in households, the proportion of installed smoke detectors that are working, the ways in which smoke detectors are failing, factors leading to non-working detectors, and types of households or housing that are more likely to have non-working smoke detectors. A total of 1,012 in-person interviews were conducted from October 1 through December 23, 1992: 811 from the main sample and an additional 201 field interviews of lower socioeconomic status (lower SES) households. All aspects of the full survey were conducted by Market Facts, Inc., under contract to the CPSC. The results of the survey will provide support for the major elements of the National Smoke Detector Project, which are intended to increase the presence of working smoke detectors in U.S. households. The National Smoke Detector Project is a joint project among the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the Congressional Fire Services Institute, the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). The Department of Housing and Urban Development and many other organizations are also project participants and have a strong interest in the results of the survey. The survey found that an estimated 88 percent of households (84.5 million) have at least one installed smoke detector. Of these, about 5 million had detectors connected to a central alarm system. The remaining 79.5 million households (or about 83 percent of all households) had non-central system detectors, and were the subject of the Smoke Detector Operability Survey.