Previous research indicates that driver education programmes have had limited success, sometimes even producing undesirable results. In an alternative approach to road safety education, the Road Safety Unit of Dublin City Council Office of the Director of Traffic commissioned a theatre company to tour 11 schools in Dublin and Donegal with a drama Never Saw the Day, which focused on the aversive consequences of road accidents. The effectiveness of this drama in promoting positive attitudes towards road safety among the sample of secondary school students (n=519) was evaluated using a Likert-scale questionnaire. In phase one of the study, this was administered to the experimental group (n=439) three times: pre-test (1–2 days prior to exposure to the drama), post-test (5–10 days after viewing) and re-test (8–10 weeks later). The control group (n=80) were not exposed to the drama but completed the questionnaires at the same three testing points as the experimental group. The main finding was that exposure to the drama led to significantly increased awareness of the potentially negative consequences of road accidents in the experimental group. A consistent gender effect also emerged, with females expressing more positive attitudes towards safety issues than males. In phase two at one year follow-up, the effects of the drama on the critical attitude measure appeared to have disappeared, however the experimental group showed a significantly greater increase in positive attitudes following exposure to a set of media messages which included an item with key properties shared with the original drama. This apparent ‘ground preparation effect’ and the gender results in the first phase of the study have clear implications for the direction of future road safety educational campaigns and their evaluation. (Author/publisher) For the covering abstract see ITRD E116881.
Abstract