Health Education Research, Vol. 18, No. 4, 493-505,
August 2003
© 2003 Oxford University Press
Tackling childrens road safety through edutainment: an evaluation of effectiveness
Department of Psychology, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN and 1 Tayside Police, Police Headquarters, Dundee DD1 9JU, UK. e-mail: m.s.zeedyk{at}dundee.ac.uk
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 childrens entertainment group to help tackle Britains poor record on childrens road safety. We wished to determine whether the video had an impact on either childrens 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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