Laura Burton, a master’s degree student in Communication and Journalism, is working on a way to expand her research into a project she undertook as part-time work. She and another graduate student, Santhost Chandrashekar, contracted with SafeTeen Inc. to do a preliminary study of the effectiveness of the SafeTeen Safe Driving Assemblies, an annual program presented in Albuquerque area high schools to deter teenage driving and drinking. One part of the assembly also addresses driving while distracted.
Photo: Laura Burton
Burton gave students a pre-test to evaluate their level of awareness about drinking and driving; then conducted a post-test after the students attended the assembly. She also tested a control group of students who did not see the assembly. Part of the test also explored student awareness of other driving distractions.
While the results did not indicate a statistically significant change in awareness of the danger of drinking and driving, they did indicate that the SafeTeen program demonstrated considerable success at addressing what is essentially a new set of problems with teen driving – the problems of distracted driving. The SafeTeen assemblies teach students that distractions from cell phone use, text messaging and in-car music adjustments pose similar risks as driving while intoxicated for young drivers.
“They originally assess driving and talking on the cell phone as a safe behavior,” said Burton “but after the program at the high school, they rated it as a more risky behavior so it did change their attitudes, which was a significant thing.”
The research also found had an unexpected result. The high school students knew drinking and driving was dangerous – the message by SafeTeen and other information sources was getting through even before the assemblies - but the researchers were surprised by the results of a question included as a general assessment of the student’s environment.
More than one-third of high school students surveyed in Albuquerque said they had ridden with an adult driver who had been drinking or taking drugs. And many of those students were engaging in risky driving behavior themselves because they assessed it as safe.
“What we found was a correlation to if they had ridden with an impaired adult driver, they rated all those measures as more safe that the other population,” said Burton. “So if they answered yes, they had higher frequencies of driving themselves while impaired with alcohol, with drugs, and other types of risky driving behaviors.”
This is a preliminary survey. SafeTeen has requested that Burton and Associate Professor of Communication and Journalism Richard Schaefer conduct further research to re-examine the SafeTeen program in the light of the findings from the previous study. She and Schaefer have applied for further funding from local health and highway sources in order to conduct further research.
Media Contacts: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu