When Is Education Effective? Systematic Evaluation Of Education Projects

Relatively little is known about the road safety effects of traffic education. On request of various Provincial Road Safety Boards, SWOV studied the effectiveness of 11 education projects in its 2003-2006 research programme. Entitled Effects of Traffic Education (EVEO), this study was carried out together with several Provincial Road Safety Boards, and with support of the Ministry of Transport's Knowledge Platform for Traffic and Transport. Education is more effective if it is part of long-lasting and repeated interventions combined with other measures such as police control. In spite of this, in EVEO short-lasting and isolated educational programmes were studied on the grounds of the principle that each education programme should demonstrate having additional effects even if it is part of such an integrated approach. The effects were measured in terms of changes in self-reported behaviour. In addition, the questionnaires contained questions about behaviour determinants, like knowledge about traffic rules, hazard awareness, safety attitude, self assessment and social values. The study consisted of a pre-test, followed by an intervention in the form of an education programme. The post-test was about a month after the intervention. A control group was used to control for external influences. For each participant in both study groups, the results of the pre-test were compared with the results on the post-test. The questionnaires consisted of a standard section which was the same for all projects, and a section which was unique for the project to assess project specific training objectives. Questionnaires could not be used for two of the projects; a test using a table-top model of roads and traffic was used instead. For one project it was not possible to conduct a pre-test. More than half of the evaluated education programmes led to a small but statistically significant improvement in safe behaviour. Dependent on the programme the proportion of students that improved their behaviour as a result of the programme, ranged between 10 and 41%. The other programmes had no significant effect. All programmes led to statistically significant changes for some of the behaviour determinants, but not for all. The study has shown that it is both desirable and essential that, in future, all education programmes are assessed on effectiveness. After all, evaluation studies provide insight into which programmes lead to behaviour changes. EVEO has given the initial impetus to a systematic and manageable evaluation method. A number of points in the EVEO method need to be further developed.