title: Time course of driving-skill self-assessments during French driver training.
abstract: Promoting self-assessment accuracy among student drivers could help improve the road safety for young novice drivers (Minimum Requirement for Driving Instructor Training, 2005). However, it is essential to first examine the time course of student drivers' assessments of their own driving skills. As a result, the present study examined the time course of student drivers' self-assessments in relation to their general driving abilities during the four steps of French driver training. We used Victoir et al.'s (2005) self-efficacy scale, which we translated into French. We set four goals for the present study: (1) to examine the psychometric qualities of this self-assessment scale, (2) to study the time courses of the students' self-assessments, (3) to investigate the relationship of these time courses to the number of driving hours that the students estimated that they needed to complete before taking the driving test, and (4) to compare the number of hours estimated by the students to the number of hours estimated by their driving instructors. In total, 150 students (58 men and 92 women) and 38 instructors from 13 driving schools in Paris participated in the present study. The self-assessment scale was composed of 12 items that were rated on a 7-point Likert scale that ranged from 1 (certainly so) to 7 (certainly not). The internal consistency of the scale was satisfactory (α=.88). The self-assessments became increasingly positive as the training progressed (at the beginning of training, M=3.45 vs. at the completion of the training, M=4.8). Globally, the men assessed themselves more positively than the women. However, no significant gender difference was observed at each training step. The students' self-ratings were negatively correlated with the number of driving hours that they estimated they still needed before taking the driving test. This number did not differ significantly from the number of hours that was estimated by the instructors at each training step throughout the training. The results describing the time course of the student drivers' self-assessments during driver training and this time course's correlation with the estimated number of driving hours still needed to take the driver test were discussed.
authors.affiliation: French National Institute for Transport and Safety Research, Laboratory of Driver Psychology, INRETS/LPC, 25 allée des Marronniers, Satory, F-78000 Versailles, France. boccara@inrets.fr
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Boccara
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Delhomme
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Vidal-Gomel
authors.forename: Janine
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rogalski
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001334:Automobile Driving / Q000193:education* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010297:Paris; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D012647:Self-Assessment; D012737:Sex Factors; D055815:Young Adult