Initially, a small ethnographic study was conducted using two
different examples of child-resistant packaging. These were both
bottles that featured child-resistant closures (CRCs); a “squeeze and
turn” plastic bleach bottle and a “push and turn” plastic bleach
bottle (see Fig. 10). The former of these uses stops on the inside of
the cap and the bottle collar that prevents the cap from being
twisted until it has been deformed (squeezed) far enough for the
stops to clear one another. The latter uses a two-piece cap design
where the outer moulding must be pushed down and engaged on
the inner moulding before the cap can be removed, otherwise the
inner moulding will merely rotate within the outer. In both cases,
the intention is that the additional cognitive ability required
compared to a simple threaded cap will prevent young children
from opening the object.
A random sample of 57 individuals were asked to open each
item in turn while being filmed. Afterwards, the film was analysed
and the grips observed. There were no grip types identified in the
CRC study that had not already been recorded in the general
packaging study (Yoxall et al., 2007). The frequency of each grip
type recorded in the CRC study is summarised in Table 1. It should
be noted that the grip type recorded is that which was used to
perform the initial movement. In virtually every case it was
observed that once the child-resistant mechanism had been overcome,
the user released the closure and switched to a different
technique to remove it from the remainder of the thread.