LEARN! Manual Example #4
This example shows the different types of objectives the Danish Road Safety Council set for their “Road Safety LIVE” initiative aimed at pupils in Grades 8 to 10 (13 to 16 year olds).
Related Step
Formulating Outcomes and Objectives
Age Group
13 to 16 year olds
In Denmark – as in many other European countries – schools with pupils in Grades 8 to 10 (13 to 16 years old) can request, free-of-charge, to have a visit by persons who have been involved in severe traffic collisions. In the “Sikker Trafik LIVE” (“Road Safety LIVE”) initiative, these persons are called “ambassadors” and their role is to tell pupils about their own collisions. Common to these ambassadors is that they have all been seriously injured in a collision, and that they themselves were (partly) to blame for the collision and injuries.
The purpose of the LIVE visits is to provide pupils with more insight into, and a better understanding of, the consequences of a traffic collision, and to focus attention on the choices pupils make in traffic. The aim is to motivate pupils to make safer choices, and to provide them with competences that enable them to take care of themselves and to take action when confronted with risky behaviour of people around them.
Several operational objectives were set for the LIVE initiative, as also set out in the theory of change one-pager (see example 8). The knowledge objective focused on what change in knowledge the LIVE initiative should achieve: a minimum of 85% of the pupils who had a visit by the LIVE initiative should know what age group is most vulnerable/exposed in traffic.
The attitude objective focused on the reception of the LIVE initiative by pupils, and set a target that at least 95% of the pupils who had a visit by the LIVE initiative should feel that the visit was good or very good.
The LIVE initiative also set an output objective for the reach per school year: a minimum of 25,000 pupils in Grades 8, 9 and 10 (equal to approximately 19% of the target population) should receive a visit from the LIVE initiative in every school year. The results of the objectives together with the achieved reach would be used as metrics to report to the foundation supporting the implementation of the LIVE initiative.
In addition, the Danish Road Safety Council also monitored a behavioural objective, which was measured via a survey 6 to 12 months following the LIVE visit. The behavioural objective focused on self-reported behaviour, and set a target that 80% of the pupils that had participated in a LIVE visit had gone on to take better care of themselves in traffic as a result.
The Danish Road Safety Council also evaluated the knowledge objective via the survey held 6 to 12 months following the LIVE visit, and set a target that 80% of the pupils should still know that they belong to the age group that is most vulnerable in traffic.
The Danish Road Safety Council contracted professional researchers to evaluate, using randomised controlled trials (RCTs), whether the “Road Safety LIVE” initiative was effective. More information on how the researchers determined that the activity is effective can be found in example 24. In addition to the RCT study, the Danish Road Safety Council also continuously conducts post-activity measurements in order to evaluate whether the formulated outcomes and outputs have been achieved. The evaluation methods they use for these post-activity measurements and their results can be found in example 25, whereas the surveys used for the post-activity measurements can be found in example 26.
Setting objectives was covered in the presentation on the evaluation of the Road Safety LIVE initiative was presented during the LEARN! Manual Webinar.
More Information
LEARN! Manual Example #4: Objectives and Output Objectives from the “Road Safety LIVE” initiative