Summary of Patricia Delhomme's Road Safety Campaign

As mentioned in the previous blog post, statistical analysis of "effective" traffic safety campaigns is limited to none. Mostly, this is due to an inconsistent manner of tracking quantitative data about what is "effective." In order to combat this problem and create a unified notion of safety campaigns with "effective results," the manual "Road Safety Communication Campaigns" was created.

The primary goal of this manual is to "provide campaign practitioners with a detailed and practical tool for the design, implementation, and evaluation of road safety campaigns." Again referencing the lack of consistent quantitative evaluation. In order to construct an effect campaign, the manual breaks it down into six steps:

These six aspects involve extensive planning, research, and pre- and post-evaluations. As I mentioned in my blog post prior to this, the most effect way of determining the effectiveness of a campaign is from before and after surveys or polls. In order to test someone's new knowledge, one must first have an understanding of the subject's basic knowledge. With the use of pre- and post-evaluations, this enables statistical analysis to be drawn from traffic safety campaigns. This step, of course, is not until level three of the six-step process; however, I would argue it is one of (if not the most) important step in the process.

Continuing this thought, the manual suggests "Statistics are generally the first aid to defining the theme of a campaign because they provide initial information about the target audience..." However, they follow up that it is, however, "...useful to base the campaign on available studies, and/or to conduct additional studies designed around theoretical models whenever the necessary information is not available." Thus explaining that a campaign should not be drawn solely from emotions, but predominantly from fact and scientific findings. Using topics that are backed by quantitative research allows for further research and campaigns to be accessed and thus determined whether or not certain actions should be continued in the future.

In addition to focusing on evaluative aspects, such as using previous statistics and scientific research, the article also argues that these campaigns need to be specific and manageable. Specifically, the topic in which the campaign is surrounding needs to be specific to an audience and broken down into manageable goals that can be accomplished overtime. The alternative approach, which includes large overarching goals and broad audiences, is not as effective in engendering change and can often lead to disappointment, illustrating a lack of effectiveness. This sort of campaign is one that is held by politicians, like the current campaign used to run for president - get as many broad goals as you can to the largest group of Americans. I would argue this is why most feel disappointed or that the president did not succeed or fulfill their promises. With smaller goals and speaking directly and consistently to certain audiences, you are bound to have more success and a greater effectiveness rate.

All in all, this manual's argument is that evaluation is extremely important. As my last blog post articulated, many studies have a difficult time articulating or illustrating effectiveness of their campaigns, but this is primarily due to a lack of evaluation. Although evaluation is costly, the use of this data is important in order to discover more ways in which we can articulate important messages to those who need to hear it - like how drivers and cyclists need to hear the message that road safety is important. Evaluation can be done simply by using surveys, polls, previous research, and statistical data already known about the topic; and if there isn't any, make some.