Developing a self-reporting method to measure pedestrian behaviors at all ages

Abstract

The objective of this study was to develop and validate a self-reporting scale to measure injury risk behaviors among pedestrians of all ages. The Pedestrian Behavior Scale (PBS) was developed that included 47 items enabling respondents to evaluate the frequency with which they had different types of pedestrian behaviors. The validation study was carried out on 343 participants (126 men and 217 women) between the ages of 15 and 78. Factor analyses were used to differentiate between 4 axes. Factor 1, “transgression”, included items concerning offence of legal rules and errors. Factor 2 included “lapses” items. Factor 3 comprised “aggressive behavior” items and factor 4 included “positive behavior” items. A revised version of the PBS with 20 items was produced by selecting those items that loaded most strongly on the four factors. The 20-item version had good internal reliability. The effects of demographic and mobility variables on the PBS scores were investigated. This instrument will be useful in measuring the frequency of these different types of behaviors among the pedestrians who are most at risk, analyzing the psychological factors used to predict PBS scores and thus better adapt preventive actions to the different populations of vulnerable road users of all ages.