Validity of instruments to assess students' travel and pedestrian safety

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Marcus J Hanfling¹  Doris K Uscanga²  Kathy Watson²  Jason A Mendoza³  Tom Baranowski⁴  Theresa A Nicklas⁴ 

[1] Academic General Pediatrics, Department of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA;Pediatric Injury Clinic, Ben Taub General Hospital, Harris County Hospital District, Houston, TX, USA;USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center, Department of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA;USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center, Department of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA;Academic General Pediatrics, Department of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA;Dan L Duncan Cancer Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA;USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center, Department of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA;Dan L Duncan Cancer Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA;

关键词: Principal Investigator;    Convergent Validity;    Travel Survey;    Pedestrian Safety;    School Travel;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-10-257

 received in 2009-10-30, accepted in 2010-05-18,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundSafe Routes to School (SRTS) programs are designed to make walking and bicycling to school safe and accessible for children. Despite their growing popularity, few validated measures exist for assessing important outcomes such as type of student transport or pedestrian safety behaviors. This research validated the SRTS school travel survey and a pedestrian safety behavior checklist.MethodsFourth grade students completed a brief written survey on how they got to school that day with set responses. Test-retest reliability was obtained 3-4 hours apart. Convergent validity of the SRTS travel survey was assessed by comparison to parents' report. For the measure of pedestrian safety behavior, 10 research assistants observed 29 students at a school intersection for completion of 8 selected pedestrian safety behaviors. Reliability was determined in two ways: correlations between the research assistants' ratings to that of the Principal Investigator (PI) and intraclass correlations (ICC) across research assistant ratings.ResultsThe SRTS travel survey had high test-retest reliability (κ = 0.97, n = 96, p < 0.001) and convergent validity (κ = 0.87, n = 81, p < 0.001). The pedestrian safety behavior checklist had moderate reliability across research assistants' ratings (ICC = 0.48) and moderate correlation with the PI (r = 0.55, p =< 0.01). When two raters simultaneously used the instrument, the ICC increased to 0.65. Overall percent agreement (91%), sensitivity (85%) and specificity (83%) were acceptable.ConclusionsThese validated instruments can be used to assess SRTS programs. The pedestrian safety behavior checklist may benefit from further formative work.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Mendoza et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010