Mid-Continent Transportation Research Symposium
Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Aug 18-19, 2011
ABSTRACT
Authors
Corinne Peek-Asa
Professor, Occupational and Environmental Health
Director, Injury Prevention Research Center
University of Iowa
100 University Research Park #114 IREH
Iowa City, IA 52242
Corinne-peek-asa@uiowa.edu
Phone: (319) 335-4895
Ginger Yang
Associate Professor, Community and Behavioral Health
Training Core Director, Injury Prevention Research Center
University of Iowa
Ginger-yang@uiowa.edu
Lisa Roth
Research Coordinator, Injury Prevention Research Center
Lisa-roth@uiowa.edu
Title: Communication is Key: A randomized trial of an intervention to increase parent
involvement in teen driving.
Format:
oral presentation preferred
Summary:
Drivers in their first six months of licensure have the highest crash rates of all drivers,
leading to high rates of injury for themselves, their passengers, and those they hit. Parents play
a critical role in the driving experience of their children. Policy approaches, such as Graduated
Driver’s Licensing Systems, and educational programs that encourage parents to define driving
rules and restrictions have shown some success in reducing teen risky driving. However,
methods to increase parental involvement in teaching driving skills and encouraging safe
driving behaviors have not been widely tested. Such interventions can augment existing GDL
systems by increasing parental knowledge and involvement in learning to drive.
The long-range goal of this research was to develop a sustainable and generalizable
intervention that to reduce crashes and related injuries among teen drivers by increasing safe
driving practices. We conducted a randomized trial of “Communication is Key,” an educational
intervention for parents of newly licensed adolescent drivers to increase parental involvement
in teaching driving skills and safe driving behavior. The intervention will has two components:
driving skills and safety goals, and a communication strategy to improve parent communication
techniques. The intervention included specific driving goals that parents discuss, demonstrate,
and pratice with their teen. This project was conducted in a rural population, so skills for driving
on rural roads were be included. The delivery of the intervention used motivational
interviewing, a successful and age-appropriate health behavior communication technique that
has shown great success in related health fields.
163 parent-teen dyads were randomized into intervention and control groups. Our
findings indicate that teens have much higher expectations of their driving frequency and
conditions than reported by their parents, which presents opportunity for conflict in
communication. The communication that parents report having with their teens is unrelated to
the teen’s driving safety attitudes; however, the communication that the teens report having
with their parents is strongly tied to teen’s driving safety attitudes. From this we conclude that
the quality as well as the quantity of communication is important. These findings present a
strong baseline for the proposed intervention.
Our evaluation suggests that parents were able to learn and apply motivational
interviewing and did engage in structured teaching on specific driving goals when provided with
materials to guide these activities. Furthermore, the teens of parents who were involved in the
intervention reported a higher quality and quantity of safe driving communication as well as
reduced risky driving behaviors than teens whose did not participate in the intervention,
although these results did not reach statistical significance. This program can be widely
implemented in many settings, including schools, workplaces, and driver’s education programs.
Key Words:
Teen driving; randomized trial; communication style; risky driving behavior