Tackling children's road safety through edutainment: an evaluation of effectiveness.

Full Abstract

The burgeoning market in electronic media has encouraged a trend toward 'edutainment', where entertaining, media-based materials are used to facilitate educational outcomes. In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of a video that has recently been released by a popular children's entertainment group to help tackle Britain's poor record on children's road safety. We wished to determine whether the video had an impact on either children's knowledge or parents' awareness of pedestrian skills, when used in a standard home-based fashion. A total of 120 families participated, all of whom had children 5 years of age. Half the families received videos at the beginning of the study, while the other half served as a control group against which to measure change in the treatment group. Data were gathered at baseline and again 1 month later, using a series of tailored questionnaire items. A robust pattern of null findings indicated that the video, when used in this casual fashion, had no educational impact on either parents or children. Crucially, however, parents strongly believed that it had. The discussion explores the implications of such a mismatch and highlights similarities with outcomes of other health education interventions.

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Author information

Author/s: Zeedyk, M S (MS); Wallace, L (L);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN, UK. m.s.zeedyk(-atsign-)dundee.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Evaluation Studies; Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Health education research (Health Educ Res), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Aug; vol 18 (issue 4) : pp 493-505

Dates: Created 2003/08/26; Completed 2003/10/03; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12939131, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Accidents, Traffic - prevention & control
Child
Female
Great Britain
Health Education - methods
Humans

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