Measuring risky adolescent cycling behaviour

Abstract

Adolescents are at a greater risk of being involved in traffic accidents than most other age groups, even before they start driving cars. This article aims to determine the factor structure of a self-report questionnaire measuring adolescent risky cycling behaviour, the ACBQ (Adolescent Cycling Behaviour Questionnaire). The questionnaire's structure was based on the widely used Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ). A sample of secondary school students (N = 1749; age range: 13–18 years) filled out the questionnaire. Factor analysis revealed a three-factor structure underlying the questionnaire, which was confirmed on two equally large portions of the entire sample. These three underlying factors were identified as errors, common violations and exceptional violations. The ACBQ is a useful instrument for measuring adolescents' risky cycling behaviour.

Keywords:

• driving-behaviour
• risk-taking
• adolescents
• bicycle
• DBQ

Notes

1. Response option 2 (yes, but no harm done) was recoded to 1 (no) to make more sense as a response to the question.

2. Using the statistical computing program ‘R’ (R Development Core Team, 2008) with the structural equation model package ‘sem’ (Fox, 2006).

3. These analyses were also conducted separately for younger and older participants and for girls and boys. All four analyses yielded similar results to the analyses of the aggregated sample.