Road safety professionals from across the UK will gather in Birmingham today (Thursday, March 15) to discuss how evaluating the outcomes of their projects can help to target limited road safety resources effectively.
They are meeting at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents’ annual Road Safety Seminar, which, this year, aims to help local authority road safety officers and others involved in road safety get to grips with effective evaluation.
The event – titled Practical Evaluation Skills – is taking place at Maple House, ETC Venues in Birmingham city centre.
Among those presenting at the event will be Stephen Stradling, Professor Emeritus at the Transport Research Institute, Edinburgh Napier University, who will speak on his practical experiences of evaluation, and Shaun Helman, principal psychologist at TRL, who will outline how “before and after” studies can be designed and conducted.
Mark Bennett, technical support manager at Britax, which is sponsoring the event, will talk about how evaluating the misuse of child car seats has influenced innovative design. And Kevin Clinton, RoSPA’s head of road safety will introduce delegates to the new Road Safety Observatory project, which will enable information to be shared about road safety issues and how to address them.
Lindsey Simkins, RoSPA’s road safety research and evaluation officer, and Elizabeth Knight, road safety manager at the London Borough of Hounslow, will give an update on the
website and E-valu-it – a toolkit which helps road safety practitioners evaluate their education, training and publicity (ETP) activities.
Kevin Clinton, RoSPA’s head of road safety, said: “At a time when there is significant pressure on road safety budgets, the importance of evaluating the effectiveness of projects has never been seen more clearly. Having properly defined aims and objectives for road safety interventions, and then properly evaluating the outcomes, is crucial if limited resources are to be put to the best use. A key aim of today’s seminar is to help road safety professionals to develop their evaluation skills.”
In addition to presentations, the seminar will include a series of practical workshops to help delegates get to grips with writing evaluation questions, setting aims and objectives and producing a logic model, planning and piloting an evaluation and running focus groups.