Road Safety Mobile Outreach Project for China: Evaluation Report

"In the past, both children and adults did not realize the importance of wearing helmets, but my child now understands by learning from a mobile device. My child says, 'Elmo needs to wear a helmet and I do too'."

This report provides an analysis of the Mobile Road Safety First! Program, which drew upon interactive mobile content and mobile broadband connectivity to teach children ages 3 to 5 years how to travel safely by car, bicycle, bus, train, and foot throughout mainland China - particularly in urban areas. It was an extension of the emergency preparedness mobile outreach initiative Let's Get Ready! [see Related Summaries, below].

Sesame Workshop, working with international mobile technology company QualComm, sought to: (i) capitalise on the potential of wireless technology in the form of mobile phone-based road safety instruction for young children; and (ii) deliver road safety content in an interactive e-book format that would be engaging and informative for young children and their caregivers.

Specifically, using an entertainment-education strategy, Sesame Workshop developed three interactive e-books featuring familiar Sesame Street characters, particularly Elmo, to lead young children through an age-appropriate curriculum. The e-books featured scenarios that are familiar in children's everyday lives. "Going to the Kindergarten" focused on safety rules for different modes of transportation (car, subway, bicycle, etc.); "Going to Lily's Home" dealt with basic pedestrian traffic rules, especially crossing urban streets; "Going to the Police Station" introduced children to traffic signs (stop sign, do-not-enter sign, etc.). Each page of the e-books featured child-friendly voice prompts and "hot spots" that allowed children to accomplish such tasks as putting on Elmo's bicycle helmet, leading Elmo over the pedestrian overpass, and fastening Elmo's car safety seat belt. "The three e-books were designed to provide an introductory, yet comprehensive and thorough, presentation of road safety situations that young children in China actually face, in a format that would make learning safety information enjoyable and memorable."

Sixty parents and 61 children in Chengdu in Sichuan Province participated in the road Safety outreach programme. Each family received a mobile broadband enabled smartphone pre-loaded with the road safety mobile website and data connectivity. After 2-3 weeks of use, the families were also provided access to the emergency preparedness content. Researchers conducted structured, one-on-one interviews both before and after being exposed to the road safety content, interviewing children and parents separately. The interviews with the children assessed safety knowledge before and after the project and were analysed using statistical methods. The interviews with the parents asked about their views of the mobile project content, their opinions about the effectiveness of the project, and their suggestions for its improvement. The parent data were analysed using both qualitative methods and statistical methods.

Selected results:

• Children's road safety knowledge increased by almost 36% in scores from pre-test to post-test.
• Parents and children found the eBook format (couching road safety messages in the form of engaging stories) to be appealing and repeatable.
• Parents felt that their children had learned because the children talked about content from the road safety project when not engaged with the e-books, even reminding their parents to observe safety behaviours presented in the mobile content. According to parents, participation in the Road Safety Project heightened their own road safety consciousness.
• The project prompted parents to think about ways to approach road safety education with their young children, beyond stating rules.
• Parents said they saw the value of using mobile devices to supplement road safety education. More than 98% agreed that, through this project, they gained greater awareness of the educational function of a smartphone.
• More than three-fourths of the parents wished for improvements to the programme content, such as longer plotlines, more complex or more challenging interactions, and more sophisticated animations. About two-thirds of the parents expressed dissatisfaction with the performance of the phone, the website, or the 3G network, particularly because one or more of these operated too slowly.

In conclusion, the report's authors conclude that the interactive e-book format "has proven effective and should be further utilized and developed." They suggest that the road safety project could be effectively broadened to include other safety areas such as household safety and disaster preparedness.

Click here for the 44-page document in PDF format.