A QUASI-CLINICAL STRATEGY FOR INVESTIGATING ATTITUDES IN THE TRANSPORTATION DOMAIN. TAKEN FROM THE BOOK ENTITLED "TRANSPORTATION PLANNING FOR A BETTER ENVIRONMENT"

A strategy is devised for investigating social-psychological aspects of transportation and then applied in two studies focusing on the behavior of automobile drivers. Since attitudes and behavior are often difficult to measure and are frequently not isomorphically related, the practical usefulness of much early psychological work in the area of driving behavior is of questionable utility. The proposed quasiclinical strategy attempts to incorporate basic attitude measurement principles and to avoid errors of prior studies. The technique stresses relatively subjective aspects of attitudes, achieving this by an eclectic approach derived from many different areas of psychology, both novel-traditional and clinical-quantitative. Another feature of the strategy is that it permits respondents to specify attitudinal domains for themselves by responding spontaneously in a freely-structured situation and in their own words, as opposed to reflecting ideas which represent prejudices and preconceptions of investigators. This quasiclinical strategy of attitude measurement has been applied in numerous settings. In the field of transportation, two basic types of studies have been conducted: the investigation of probable public reactions to a specific contingency aimed at inducing safety-related behavior (introduction of legislation making the use of car seat belts mandatory), and an attempt to formulate a social psychology of driving behavior and focus on the relation between the automobile driver and other persons in the driving situation (car passengers, pedestrians, and other vehicle drivers). Findings of the seat belt study of 465 residents in Regina, Sask., Canada, suggest that the public feels the government has legitimate authority to issue directives concerning motor vehicle behavior and that laws might be effective in encouraging seat belt use. Results of the social psychology of driving study indicate that psychological reactions to an accident are conditioned by the behavior of the other driver on the one hand and by the presence or absence of persons other than drivers. Drivers make inferences about attitudes and motivations of other drivers and react in terms of these inferences. Drivers continually impute motives, opinions, and values to other drivers based on a number of visible characteristics not directly related to the driving process.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Sponsored by Canadian Ministry of Transport.
• Corporate Authors:

  Plenum Publishing Company

  227 West 17th Street
  New York, NY  United States  10011
• Authors:
  • Knapper, C K
  • Cropley, A J
• Publication Date: 1976

Media Info

• Features: References;
• Pagination: 12 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Attitudes; Behavior; Crashes; Drivers; Laws; Manual safety belts; Psychological aspects
• Subject Areas: Law; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00394091
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• Report/Paper Numbers: HS-026 981U
• Files: HSL, USDOT
• Created Date: May 31 1985 12:00AM