The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and BMW of North America, Inc. are funding a research project to develop guidelines for evaluating driver education programs. In 1995, Northport Associates produced the Novice Driver Education Model Curriculum Outline, which has become the most widely distributed report ever published by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Northport Associates is conducting this project in close consultation with an advisory group and other experts. Although driver education programs seek to teach young people the skills necessary to be safe drivers, there is little compelling evidence that young people who successfully complete driver education programs subsequently drive more safely than those who do not receive formal driver education. Do driver education programs enhance safety? Do some types of driver education programs lead to better educational and safety outcomes than others? How can driver education programs be improved in order to yield safer young drivers? Various methodological weaknesses in previous evaluations of driver education programs have left these questions partially or completely unanswered. Some evaluators have neglected to assess learning outcomes or have used poor comparisons or sample sizes much too small to reliably find moderate effects. Such common inadequacies have led to controversy over the findings of evaluations of driver education programs. This project will assimilate the good work that has been done, consult extensively with experts, and provide a road map of how to evaluate driver education programs. This project seeks to make driver education programs more effective by offering tools to evaluators that will help in examining driver education programs to see what works. This is being done through a comprehensive review and consultation project, with an active advisory group. Northport Associates is conducting a thorough review of the driver education evaluation literature, examining methods and theories of driver education programs, identifying and assessing evaluation methods, measures, and data sources, and preparing a final report issuing recommendations for future evaluations of driver education programs. This final report will be an authoritative guide for researchers who want to evaluate driver education programs. The guidelines will lead to better, more focused evaluations, and result in data that can be compared and built upon, leading to improved safety outcomes for driver education graduates. This paper is intended to provide a common background and stimulus for discussion of driver education evaluation guidelines. It briefly introduces driver education (DE), the current state of DE evaluation, and important concepts from the program evaluation field. It also discusses the implications of evaluation in other relevant fields for driver education evaluation. A preliminary evaluation framework is presented and directions for developing a practical set of DE guidelines are suggested. The paper concludes with a set of questions intended to stimulate critical thinking and discussion about the content and format of the guidelines. The literature review that provides a detailed overview of driver education evaluation can also be found on the Discussion Board at http://www.northportassociates.com/aaafts. (Author/publisher)
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