National Academies Press: OpenBook

Special Safety Concerns of the School Bus Industry (2010)

Chapter: Chapter Three - Synthesis Survey Development, Peer Review, and Focus Group and Methods

« Previous: Chapter Two - Literature Review
Page 8
Suggested Citation:"Chapter Three - Synthesis Survey Development, Peer Review, and Focus Group and Methods." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Special Safety Concerns of the School Bus Industry. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14351.
×
Page 8
Page 9
Suggested Citation:"Chapter Three - Synthesis Survey Development, Peer Review, and Focus Group and Methods." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2010. Special Safety Concerns of the School Bus Industry. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14351.
×
Page 9

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

9To ensure that the most relevant safety issues were addressed in this study, the research team sought input from a peer review group of subject matter experts in the field of pupil transportation. The objective of the focus group was to dis- cuss safety concerns relevant to school bus operations, driver selection and training, barriers to safety (and methods for addressing them), and emergency/security issues. In addition, a major objective of the focus group was to obtain detailed feedback regarding the content and structure of the study’s draft survey instrument, which was constructed based on information gathering during the work plan development phase of the present study. PARTICIPANT RECRUITMENT FOR FOCUS GROUPS Potential participants for the focus group were recruited by means of telephone and e-mail. Each potential participant was given a description of the CTBSSP Synthesis Program and an overview of this synthesis. They were informed of the importance of sharing their experience to ensure that the most important topics in the field of pupil transportation were addressed in this synthesis and were invited to participate in an hour-long teleconference focus group with their peers (see Appendix A for the recruitment e-mail). Participants were recruited using publicly available contact information from the following websites and publications: • National Association for Pupil Transportation • National Association of State Directors of Pupil Trans- portation Services • National School Transportation Association • School Bus Fleet • School Transportation News. Individuals identified on these websites as contacts were recruited for the focus group, and a “snowballing” technique was used whereby each person contacted was encouraged to extend the invitation to other colleagues. In some cases, the e-mail invitation was forwarded to listservs of organizations and associations. In addition, school bus fleet managers and directors of transportation from geographically diverse areas of the United States were recruited in an attempt to have a vari- ety of experiences and perspectives represented. A total of eight individuals expressed interest in partici- pating; however, only six of these individuals were available during the time frames suggested for the teleconference. Given the snowballing recruitment technique, it is difficult to estimate the total number of individuals invited for the teleconference; therefore, the exact response rate cannot be calculated. METHODS AND RESULTS Before the conference call, each participant was e-mailed an informed consent document (required for study participation), a draft of the synthesis survey, and a PowerPoint presentation that was used to guide the call. At the beginning of the call, the facilitator was intro- duced and reviewed the purpose of the discussion by means of the PowerPoint presentation (see Appendix B). Follow- ing brief participant introductions and a general discussion of school bus safety, attention was turned to the draft sur- vey and the scope of topics addressed. The draft survey was discussed item by item and participants commented on the wording and response format of each. In addition, new items could be added if a participant(s) believed that a spe- cific, relevant topic was not included, and items were grouped by topic area. Following the teleconference, participants were encour- aged to send their notes and edits to the survey to the research team. Using this information, the draft survey was revised and redistributed to the focus group for a second round of input, which allowed participants to reconsider the instru- ment as a whole and to make final comments and sugges- tions. The survey instrument was finalized (see Appendix C) based on participant edits and suggestions. The final survey instrument included multiple choice, yes/no, quantitative, Likert scale, and open-ended response formats. PARTICIPANT RECRUITMENT FOR SURVEY Recruitment of participants for the survey was similar to that of the focus group, but was much larger in scale. For example, the National Association for Pupil Transportation website includes links to national school bus organizations, state CHAPTER THREE SYNTHESIS SURVEY DEVELOPMENT, PEER REVIEW, AND FOCUS GROUP AND METHODS

organizations, trade publications, and other interest groups. Each of these links includes pages of contacts that were used to send hundreds of e-mail invitations to complete the survey. E-mail invitations (see Appendix D) included a full description of the synthesis program and the objectives of the present synthesis, the online survey URL, a recruitment flyer that could be used to advertise the study, and also the pdf survey as an attachment. Again, a snowball recruitment 10 tactic was encouraged, whereby potential participants were urged to distribute the survey widely to their colleagues and employees. In several cases, state directors and fleet man- agers responded, indicating that they had distributed the survey to all of the school bus drivers under their jurisdic- tion. Finally, approximately 700 flyers were distributed along with the programs at the annual School Transporta- tion News conference and trade show in Reno, Nevada (July 26–30, 2008).

Next: Chapter Four - Synthesis Survey Results »
Special Safety Concerns of the School Bus Industry Get This Book
×
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

TRB’s Commercial Truck and Bus Safety Synthesis Program (CTBSSP) Synthesis 17: Special Safety Concerns of the School Bus Industry explores various safety issues faced by school bus operators, including how the issues are currently addressed, barriers to improvements, and suggestions for making improvements in the future.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!