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NORC at the University Chicago

Evidence-Based Behavior Campaigns for Traffic Safety

Children next to a car walking through pedestrian crossing to the school
A toolkit to move from simple traffic safety education to behavioral change
  • Client
    AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety

Problem

Promoting safe behaviors helps reduce traffic-related injuries and fatalities among road users.

Traffic safety practitioners develop public health promotion campaigns to increase traffic safety. Health promotion campaigns and interventions to improve traffic safety are most effective when grounded in theory and supported by evidence.  

Solution

NORC developed the Traffic Safety Toolkit to provide information and resources to traffic safety practitioners.

With funding from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, NORC developed a toolkit that helps practitioners plan, implement, evaluate, and sustain traffic safety campaigns. To develop the toolkit, we conducted:

  • An environmental scan to identify evidence-based and promising models for traffic safety campaigns,
  • Interviews with traffic safety practitioners to identify models and best practices, and
  • Interviews with traffic safety experts to validate our findings.

The toolkit contains information and resources that help practitioners implement best practices in traffic injury prevention. We also developed a research brief to increase awareness of the toolkit.  

Result

The toolkit helps traffic safety practitioners develop campaigns that are evidence-based and effective.

The toolkit includes information and resources to help traffic safety practitioners plan, design, implement, and evaluate effective behavior change campaigns. The toolkit combines evidence-based examples and lessons learned from the fields of traffic safety, behavior change, and public health.

The toolkit describes five phases to help practitioners develop a campaign:

  1. Understand behavior change campaigns and theory
  2. Develop a campaign plan and strategy
  3. Develop and pre-test messages
  4. Implement the campaign
  5. Evaluate the campaign

Each phase consists of multiple steps, and each step describes the activities required to complete the step. Each phase also includes a short checklist of important considerations when developing a campaign.

The toolkit is designed so practitioners can start at any phase or step, based on existing needs, resources, and progress.

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