This project builds on the Phase One Child Development Project (Thornton et al., 1998), which endorsed the need to teach traffic skills, and reported a previously unknown developmental change in how children represent the goals of road safety (the transition from damage- to error-avoidance) that was postulated to have implications for the extent to which traffic skill training will transfer. The aim of this project was to develop and evaluate a booklet for parents to support them in teaching traffic skills and comprehension to their own children and also to induce an erroravoidant perspective and consistent spontaneous deployment of traffic skills at the roadside. The project was divided into two stages. The first was a series of pilot studies in ‘contrived naturalistic’ environments to investigate the effectiveness of the scheme as a whole (including parental ability to mediate it). The second stage involved large-scale surveys to investigate the scheme’s success under more ‘naturalistic’ conditions. The pilot studies demonstrated that parents can reliably execute and score all the dynamic elements in the booklet (the walks, quizzes, and other tests) and that they can use these tools to determine what their child needs to learn next. Further, the experience of the quiz task systematically fostered an increase in error avoidance. This stage concluded with a larger-scale pilot evaluation of the booklet within a fairly contrived environment. Parents were asked to use the booklet over the school summer holidays and make three successive data returns over that period. Seventeen per cent of parents complied and returned all three data sets at appropriate intervals. Socio-economic group (SEG) was not a significant factor in these return rates. Children across all ages and SEGs showed significant gains from using the booklet in traffic skills and comprehension, in spontaneous (uncued) traffic awareness, and in error-avoidance, compared to control data. Furthermore, while gains in traffic skills per se were not associated with improvements in children’s spontaneous (uncued) traffic hazard awareness, increases in error-avoidance were significantly related to increases in spontaneous traffic hazard awareness, as Thornton et al. (1998) predicted. Following these pilot studies, in the second stage a large-scale (10,000 booklet) survey was undertaken, in May 2000, under naturalistic conditions. Booklets were distributed to children via schools, with the intention of analysing quiz data returned by parents. Unfortunately, the passive method of distribution led to an extremely low return rate and the quantity of data obtained was inadequate for analysis purposes. Subsequent follow-up of some of the parents (who had returned material), schools, and road safety officers pointed to a number of administrative problems having impacted on people’s willingness to participate. These included the lack of structural support for parents (including timetables), the additional burden placed on participants for the data gathering part of the exercise, the lack of an ‘opt in’ commitment, and the lack of immediate incentives for participation. When such issues were addressed in the subsequent large-scale survey (September 2000, with nearly 2,000 booklets distributed), the data return rate improved considerably – although there was still perceived to be a general lack of desire, for many different reasons, to participate in a study of traffic skills. The results from this second survey demonstrated that, overall, children’s traffic skills and hazard awareness improved significantly. Indeed, there was a significant relationship between improvement in scores on the yellow (traffic skills) and green (hazard-awareness) tasks. The general effect was for a greater improvement generally on the scores of younger children compared to older children: the clear age difference present before the scheme was eradicated by the end. There were no significant effects of gender, SEG, region or location of residence on skill developments. The scheme also induced a general shift in the children from a damage- to an error avoidant perspective. Overall, children residing in rural areas are more likely to be damage-avoidant, and the gap between rural and urban children on remembering to stop at the kerb widens for older children. Subsequent follow-up of the parents involved in the scheme demonstrated support for both the booklet itself and its intentions. Most found it easy to use and an effective mechanism to help them teach road safety issues to their own children. Parents reported an appreciation of the road safety task from the child’s perspective, understanding how this might differ from the problem for the adult, and many said that subsequently they would actively involve their children in decision-making at the roadside. This report concludes with an assessment of some of the issues raised by the research, in particular the need to undertake ‘risk assessment’ of the potential effectiveness of largescale surveys. Further potential work is also suggested. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting