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Parental Attitudes to Road Safety Education Final Report
Executive Summary
Introduction
In August 2003 the Scottish Executive commissioned ODS Ltd. and Market Research UK to carry out research into parental attitudes to road safety education (RSE) in Scotland. The study focussed on parents of two specific age groups of children and young people - 7-13 year olds and 14-18 year olds.
Main Findings and Conclusions
- Road safety is seen as one of the main three risks faced by children of all ages, along with drug and alcohol abuse and violence, bullying and intimidation
- Generally parents expressed high levels of confidence in their children's road user skills and awareness. The main risks were often perceived to be "external factors" such as driver behaviour and speeding traffic rather than the child's behaviour.
- There is evidence that black and minority ethnic parents generally have less confidence in their children's road safety skills and awareness than the population as a whole
- An area of concern expressed by parents was the perceived deterioration in road safety awareness and skills as children became teenagers.
- Parents of both 7-13 year olds and 14-18 years shared a concern that their children's approaches to road safety deteriorated when they were with a group of friends, where peer pressure tended to result in less care being taken when in a road or travel situation
- Parents saw themselves as having the main responsibility to develop road safety awareness and skills in their children and saw it as an important part of their role as parents. The most prevalent approach to road safety education by parents is by example in "real life" situations. Most parents change their own behaviour in "road related" situations when they are accompanied by their children to act as "role models"
- Parents of younger children are more likely to reinforce road safety messages than the parents of older, teenage children. Parents of the older age group recognise that there is a danger of teenage or adolescent children "reacting against" too much advice and warning
- There are varying levels of understanding and appreciation of what road safety education work is carried out in schools, with a substantial proportion of parents having little knowledge of what is done.
- Parents perceived the main purpose of road safety education within the primary school to be the reinforcement of basic road user skills, especially safe pedestrian behaviour, that they as parents are primarily responsible for
- The main focus within the secondary school should be the development and reinforcement of responsible, considerate and mature attitudes within teenagers, which will in turn, reinforce safe road user behaviour. A particular focus for road safety in the secondary school was the preparation of young people for driving
- Twenty per cent of parents did not or would not be able to give their children correct advice in a particularly risky pedestrian situation (how to walk safely on a road without a pavement).
- A significant proportion of parents indicated a willingness to get involved in road safety work within the schools their children attend. Consultation with other stakeholders, particularly teachers would suggest that in reality, this is likely to be an over-estimate. Despite this, there are still substantial untapped resources in the form of voluntary parental support for school based road safety activities.
- There is a need for educational initiatives to "target" certain groups of parents whose children may be more at risk of involvement in a road accident. This should address greater levels of risk and poorer levels of skill and awareness, particularly among certain, more disadvantaged sections of the community.
- There is continuing need/demand for simple information on key road safety skills from a small but significant proportion of parents. This reflected both a lack of awareness of the availability of existing materials, and in some cases, the availability of suitable materials in accessible formats.
- Already there is a significant involvement by some Road Safety Units with groups such as Parents Teachers Associations and School Boards which can be built upon, through for example the development of joint teacher parent training workshops
- There is particular scope to involve the parents of teenage children in pre-driver education in conjunction with the schools their children attend and local road safety units.
Recommendations
The main recommendations of the study are:
- An audit of current material and resources as part of a wider strategic review of available road safety resources in order to identify gaps or resources requiring updating.
- The provision of a simple, up to date leaflet for parents which sets out road safety strategies for teaching key pedestrian skills and summarises the types of road safety work which is being developed in schools and ways in which parents can support and reinforce this. Distribution of this should focus on parents of the younger (7-13 years) age group and could be done through both primary and secondary schools.
- The Scottish Road Safety Campaign (SRSC) should initiate discussions with Road Safety Units and a number of Community Learning Partnerships to explore the potential to incorporate road safety education within local community learning strategies, particularly in areas designated as Social Inclusion Partnerships.
- Targeted education and publicity campaigns should be aimed at the significant proportion of the adult population who themselves do not possess certain key skills and awareness of road safety.
- The SRSC should develop a pilot project with a small number of Road Safety Units to develop awareness raising workshops for parents and teachers and produce a simple training pack covering these themes which could be made available to local Road Safety Units.
- The SRSC along with one Road Safety Unit should work to develop a programme specifically for a group of parents in relation to pre-driver education. This could be developed in partnership with two or three secondary schools with a view to placing parents as "volunteer instructors" in these schools. This pilot could then be evaluated, particularly to assess the potential for replication and extension to other schools throughout Scotland.
- The SRSC consider the production in DVD/video format of a resource "Helping your child to safety". This would be specifically aimed at parents of the 7-13 year old group. This would identify the main road safety risks identified by parents, children and road safety professionals.
- Follow up research should be conducted to look in more detail at the interaction between parents and children in real life road and travel related situations. The aim of this would be to assess the differences of what parents say they do, and what they actually do in real life.
- There should be further research on the attitudes of teenagers to road safety. This should focus on how road safety messages can be most effectively conveyed to this group to bring about changes in attitudes and behaviour.
- The Scottish Road Safety Campaign could develop links with Young Scot, to use this magazine to promote key road safety messages to teenagers throughout Scotland.
- Local road safety strategies should take the key role that parents have in the road safety education of their children into account in the development of local campaigns, promotional and educational activities.
About the study
The study was carried out between August 2003 and March 2004. It comprised of the following stages:
- a desk top literature review on parental attitudes and involvement in Road Safety Education
- a large scale quantitative door to door survey of 2,400 parents of children aged 7-13 years and those with young people aged 14-18 years
- thirteen focus groups with parents and their children (held in parallel)
- consultative interviews with key stakeholders.
The study was overseen by a small advisory group with representatives from the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Road Safety Campaign.
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