Use Program Evaluation To Enhance Driving Safety

CHOP researchers collaborated with the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PennDot) to develop tools to facilitate the evaluation and enhancement of safe driving programs for teens. The Teen Outreach Program Evaluation for Driving Safety project included stakeholder interviews in the community, review of existing programs both within the state and across the nation, and interactive workshops with traffic safety professionals.

This was a rigorous stakeholder-guided process and both innovative and practical in nature. Use of these program evaluation tools will help organizations bring meaningful programs to their communities by:

  • identifying their community's traffic safety issues and needs
  • leveraging that information to develop programs with maximum impact
  • measuring the impact of programs to guide future programming.

Although focused on teen driver safety topics, these program evaluation resources can be used by any organization interested in offering programs on a wide range of safety and other public health topics:

  • Program Planning & Evaluation Guidebook: Its 13 chapters include how to conduct a needs assessment to determine specific problems and needs for individual areas; generating SMART objectives; selecting appropriate programming, and recommendations for determining evaluation metrics. 
  • Resource Book: Evidence-based, adapted supplementary resources are collected here, including worksheets; pre-post surveys; websites; literature recommendations; data resources; and more.
  • CHOP Program Planning and Evaluation YouTube Channel: Videos were created to accompany each chapter of the guidebook and are available on YouTube.
  • Key Performance Measures Based on the Literature: CHOP researchers worked with PennDOT to identify criteria to measure accomplishments of its traffic safety programs based on the logic model theory developed in Year 1 of the project. The Resource Book includes six key performance measures and 47 example questions.
  • Teen Traffic Safety Program Database: As a helpful supplement to this Guidebook, this database includes 62 traffic safety outreach programs.