Evaluating Driver Education Programs: Comprehensive Guidelines, sponsored by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and BMW of North America, provides a detailed background for planning and conducting effective evaluation of beginner driver education, and for integrating evaluation into program development and policy. The Guidelines cover a range of evaluations from simple to complex, and are written primarily for program evaluators, researchers, and other technical audiences. Actual tools, such as surveys, focus group guides, and log books that can be used or adapted for evaluating beginner driver education programs are included. There are two companion documents. Evaluating Driver Education Programs: Management Overview provides a general introduction to evaluation and research methods relevant to the whole range of driver education evaluation, including safety impacts. The Management Overview is intended for driving school owners, driver educators, program managers, administrators, and others with limited background in research methods. It provides a general introduction to the art and science of program evaluation, with a specific focus on how program evaluation concepts and methods can be applied to driver education evaluation. Evaluating Driver Education Programs: How-To Guide is a hands-on manual about the formative types of evaluation that program developers and managers can use to improve the quality of their products and processes. Formative evaluation helps develop, improve, or “form” a program by assessing its content and products, and its processes and delivery. The How-to Guide provides step-by-step guidance for actually conducting a basic evaluation aimed at improving a beginner driver education program. The Guide was developed especially for driving school operators and owners, program developers, and managers. The Guidelines, Management Overview, and How-to Guide are intended to meet the needs of different people in the driver education field and to support better, more focused evaluations. These three documents provide a set of tools that can be used to carefully and rigorously evaluate beginner driver education programs. It is hoped that their use will result in a growing body of evaluation information that can be built upon, leading to better driver education programs and, ultimately, safer young drivers. The three documents and related evaluation resources are also available on the website of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, http://www.aaafoundation.org. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting