PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF THE MANCHESTER DRIVER BEHAVIOUR QUESTIONNAIRE IN ROMANIA: VALIDATION OF A CROSS-CULTURAL VERSION

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1 International Journal of Traffic and Transportation Psychology Volume 1, ISSUE PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF THE MANCHESTER DRIVER BEHAVIOUR QUESTIONNAIRE IN ROMANIA: VALIDATION OF A CROSS-CULTURAL VERSION PAUL SÂRBESCU West University of Timişoara, Bld. V. Pârvan nr. 4, Timişoara, , Romania Bucharest University, Bld. M. Kogălniceanu nr , , Romania Abstract This research investigated the psychometric properties and the factorial structure of the Manchester Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ) in Romania. Although older versions of the DBQ were validated on the Romanian population, the cross-cultural version hasn t been used so far. The non-experimental research was performed on a sample of 200 participants, aged between 19 and 33 years, using the DBQ. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis supported the original four-factor structure identified in Great Britain, Finland and The Netherlands. The factors reliability ranged from.62 to.78, thus showing satisfactory reliability. Overall, the results showed that the cross-cultural version of the DBQ is a valid and reliable tool for assessing driving behaviour in Romania. Keywords: Driver behaviour, Manchester Driver Behaviour Questionnaire, factor structure, psychometric properties, reliability. 1. INTRODUCTION It has been estimated that the human factor is responsible for 85-90% of road accidents (Lewin, 1982; Rumar, 1985). Thus, many studies in the last two decades have focused on the relationship between the human factor and driving behaviour (Jonah, 1997; Iversen & Rundmo, 2002; Dahlen, Martin, Ragan & Kuhlman, 2005; Dahlen & White, 2006). One of the most used theoretical taxonomy of aberrant driving behaviours has been developed in the United Kingdom, in the beginning of the 90 s (Reason, 1990; Reason, Manstead, Stradling, Baxter, & Campbell, 1990). It distinguishes between two empirically different classes of behaviour: errors and violations. Errors were defined as the failure of planned actions to achieve their intended consequences, while violations were defined as deliberate deviations from those practices believed necessary to maintain the safe operation of a potentially hazardous system (Reason 20

2 et al., 1990). However, this taxonomy evolved over time: Reason et al. found a third factor, which was labelled lapses. Also, several researches showed that the violations factor can be divided into two distinctive scales, according to the reason why drivers violate: aggressive violations (which contain an interpersonally aggressive component) and ordinary violations (which are deliberate deviations from safe driving, without a specifically aggressive aim) (Lawton, Parker, Manstead & Stradling, 1997). The Manchester Driving Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ) is the instrument which derived from the theoretical taxonomy mentioned above (Reason et al., 1990). Since its development, the DBQ has been applied in various researches regarding risky and/or aggressive driving, and road accidents (Parker, Reason, Manstead & Stradling, 1995; Iversen & Rundmo, 2002; Machin & Sankey, 2008). Along with the taxonomy development, several different versions of the DBQ appeared, varying the number of factors (2 to 6), as well as the number of items (24 to 114) (Lajunen, Parker & Summala, 2004; Őzkan, Lajunen & Summala, 2006). The use of the DBQ in research has extended far beyond the borders of the UK, resulting in several different factor structures. In Australia, Blockey and Hartley (1995) found a three-factor solution: general errors, dangerous errors and violations. In Sweden, Åberg and Rimmő (1998) identified two different types of errors: inattention and inexperience errors. In China, Xie and Parker (2002) obtained a slightly different four-factor structure: lapses and errors, inattention errors, aggressive violations and maintaining progress violations. Also, Lajunen et al. (2004) have argued for the cross-cultural stability of the classic four-factor structure of the DBQ (errors, lapses, ordinary and aggressive violations), in Britain, Finland and The Netherlands. Generally, regardless of country or factor structure, the DBQ proved at least acceptable reliability. Although, the last presented version of the DBQ seems to be the most stable one. In Romania, a 37 items version has been validated (Hohn, 2009; Havârneanu, Gheorghiu & Hohn, 2010); the authors found a three-factor solution (errors, dangerous violations and speeding violations) to be the most interpretable one. However, the cross-cultural version of the DBQ hasn t yet been used. 2. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to assess the psychometric properties and the factorial structure of the cross-cultural version of the DBQ in Romania. 3. METHOD 3.1. PARTICIPANTS The total sample (n = 200) consisted of 113 males (56.5%) and 87 females (43.5%). The age of the respondents ranged from 19 to 33 years (M = 25.80, SD = 21

3 3.65). The sample consisted of students, their friends and relatives. All subjects volunteered to take part in the study INSTRUMENTS The participants completed the extended 27-item Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ; Lawton et al., 1997; Parker et al., 1998), which contains four scales: lapses, errors, ordinary and aggressive violations. The last scale is made up of 3 items, while other are made up of 8 items each. Respondents were asked to indicate how often they themselves do each of the violations and errors when driving, and the responses were recorded on a six-point Likert scale PROCEDURE This research was conducted via . Specifically, first year psychology students received the DBQ in a Microsoft Word text file. They were asked to send it to five of their friends and/or relatives, which held a driver license. The students received extra credit in an introductory statistical course for completing this task. 4. RESULTS 4.1. SCALE STATISTICS Table 1 presents means and standard deviations for all 27 items of the original scale, while table 2 presents means, standard deviations, skewness, kurtosis, and Cronbach s α coefficients for the four DBQ scales. Table1. Means and standard deviations for all items Item M SD Lapses Hit something when reversing that you had not previously seen Intending to drive to destination A, you wake up to find yourself on the road to destination B Get into the wrong lane approaching a roundabout or a junction Switch one thing, such as the headlights, when you meant to switch on something else, such as the wipers Attempt to drive away from the traffic lights in third gear Forget where you left your car in a car park Misread the signs and exit from a roundabout on the wrong road Realize that you have no clear recollection of the road along which you have just been travelling Errors 0.69 Queuing to turn left onto a main road, you pay such close attention to the main stream of traffic that you nearly hit the car in front of you Fail to notice that pedestrians are crossing when turning into a side street from a main road Fail to check your rear-view mirror before pulling out, changing lanes, etc Brake too quickly on a slippery road or steer the wrong way in a skid On turning left nearly hit a cyclist who has come up on your inside Miss Give Way signs and narrowly avoid colliding with traffic having right of way Attempt to overtake someone that you had not noticed to be signaling a right turn Underestimate the speed of an oncoming vehicle when overtaking Ordinary violations Pull out of a junction so far that the driver with right of way has to stop and let you out Disregard the speed limit on a residential road

4 Item M SD Stay in a motorway lane that you know will be closed ahead until the last minute before forcing your way into the other lane Overtake a slow driver on the inside Race away from traffic lights with the intention of beating the driver next to you Drive so close to the car in front that it would be difficult to stop in an emergency Cross a junction knowing that the traffic lights have already turned against you Disregard the speed limit on a motorway Aggressive violations Sound your horn to indicate your annoyance to another road user Become angered by another driver and give chase with the intention of giving him/her a piece of your mind Become angered by a certain type of a driver and indicate your hostility by whatever means you can Table 2. Means, standard deviations, skewness, kurtosis and α coefficients of the DBQ scales Scale M SD Skewness Kurtosis Cronbach s α Lapses Errors Ordinary violations Aggressive violations Table 3. Correlations among scales of the Romanian version of the DBQ. Scale Lapses Errors Ordinary violations Lapses - Errors.46** - Ordinary violations.41**.32** - Aggressive violations.17*.23**.53** Notes: * p <.05, ** p <.01. The skewness and kurtosis values indicate that distributions do not deviate substantially from normality for any of the four scales. The internal consistencies alphas ranged from.65 (for the lapses scale) to.78 (for the Ordinary violations scale), thus showing satisfactory reliability for all four scales. The correlation matrix of the DBQ scales is presented in Table 3. Correlations among scales ranged from.17 to.53, thus their intensity being similar to those reported by other authors (Lawton et al., 1997; Parker et al., 1998) EXPLORATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS The factorial structure of the DBQ was verified through exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The analysis was accomplished using Principal Axis Factoring followed by Direct Oblimin rotation, and allowed extracting four factors, using parallel analysis (Horn, 1965). These factors explained 29.91% of the total variance. The first four eigenvalues were: 5.37, 2.41, 1.60 and The first two factors were Lapses and Ordinary Violations, and accounted for 17.48% and 6.67% of the explained variance. The next two factors were Aggressive Violations and Errors, 23

5 which accounted for 3.78% and 1.98% of the explained variance, respectively. Table 4 shows the results of the exploratory factor analysis. Table 4. Results of the EFA. Item nr. A priori scale Lapses Ordinary Violations Aggressive Violations Errors h² it_1 Lapses it_2 Lapses it_4 Lapses it_12 Lapses it_15 Lapses it_19 Lapses it_22 Lapses it_26 Lapses it_3 Ordinary Violations it_10 Ordinary Violations it_11 Ordinary Violations it_18 Ordinary Violations it_20 Ordinary Violations it_21 Ordinary Violations it_23 Ordinary Violations it_24 Ordinary Violations it_7 Aggressive Violations it_17 Aggressive Violations it_25 Aggressive Violations it_5 Errors it_6 Errors it_8 Errors it_9 Errors it_13 Errors it_14 Errors it_16 Errors it_27 Errors % variance Notes: h² = communality. For the sake of clarity, factor loadings less than.30 have been omitted. Several items (from all four scales) had their primary loading in a different factor than expected. Also, about 50% of the items had secondary loadings higher than.30 in a different factor. Similar results were obtained by other authors (Lajunen et al., 2004), when testing the factor structure of this cross-cultural version of DBQ CONFIRMATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to evaluate the adequacy of the identified factor structure. Along with the original correlated four-factor model, we tested an uncorrelated four-factor model, a correlated two-factor model (lapses and errors forming one factor, and violations forming the other), an uncorrelated twofactor model and a one factor model. The results of the CFA are presented in Table 5. 24

6 Table 5. Primary goodness of fit and comparative indices for the five models of DBQ Model χ² df GFI AGFI RMSEA IFI CFI One factor ** [ ] Two uncorrelated factors ** [ ] Two correlated factors ** [ ] Four uncorrelated factors ** [ ] Four correlated factors ** [ ] Notes: ** p <.01 From all tested models, the one factor model showed the worst fit, the two factor model achieved poor fit, while the original four correlated factors model showed the best fit. Thus, the last model seems to be the most representative solution. 5. DISCUSSION The aim of the present research was to assess the psychometric properties and the factorial structure of the cross-cultural version of the DBQ in Romania. The internal consistencies are similar to those found in other translated version of the DBQ (Lajunen et al., 2004; Gras, Sullman, Cunill, Planes, Aymerich & Font- Mayolas, 2006; Bener, Őzkan & Lajunen, 2008). The scale with the highest internal reliability was ordinary violations, and the scale with the lowest internal reliability was lapses. Exploratory factor analysis allowed extracting four factors, which explained 29.91% of the total variance. Thus, the expected factorial structure was supported. Also, confirmatory factor analysis provided support for the four-factor structure, detrimental for the two-factor possible structure, which appears to be the most stable over time (Őzkan et al., 2006). Future researches in Romania could verify the possible links between this cross-cultural version of the DBQ and road accidents, or try to explain aberrant driving behaviours throughout a specific personality model: the Five-Factor Model (Costa & McCrae, 1992) or the Alternative Five-Factor Model (Zuckerman, Kuhlman, Joireman, Teta, & Kraft, 1993). In conclusion, the cross-cultural version of the DBQ is a valid and reliable tool for assessing driving behaviour in Romania. The internal consistencies are at satisfactory level, being congruent with those arising from other translated versions. Exploratory factor analysis replicated the four-factor structure postulated by Reason s taxonomy. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the identified factorial structure achieved optimal fit. Thus, the cross-cultural version of the DBQ is a valid tool for assessing driving behaviour in Romania, having theoretical and applied research value. 25

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