Effect of educational intervention on safe traffic behaviors of high school male students in Iran, using the theory of planned behavior: a quasi-experimental study

BACKGROUND: Behavior change interventions in tackling road traffic injuries are a public health concern. Thus, this interventional research was to survey the effect of safe traffic behaviors among male students in Hamadan, Iran, utilizing theory of planned behavior. METHODS: In this quasi-experimental study, 204 students were randomly selected through multistage sampling from male high school students of Hamadan city, west-central of Iran, and non-randomly allocated to control and intervention groups (102 students in every group). The self-administrate questionnaire was used for data collection in this research. Frequency (percentage) and mean (SD) were used for description. Cronbach alpha coefficient, content validity ratio (CVR) and content validity index (CVI) were used for psychometric evaluation of questionnaire and paired/independent sample t-test was used for data analysis. All statistical analyses were done in SPSS 19 and significant level was considered 0.05. RESULTS: In both groups, more than 50 % of students walked to school. The two study groups were homogeneous in terms of confounding variables (p > 0.05). The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed and the total Cronbach’s alpha value was equal to 0.97. There was no significant difference in the score of safe traffic behaviors between the two groups before the intervention (p > 0.05). But after the intervention, the score in the intervention group was significantly increased (p < 0.05). Intragroup comparison also showed that only in the intervention group the score was significantly changed (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Theory of planned behavior is a suitable conceptual framework for planning the interventions to increase safe traffic behaviors in students.