Project Description

Attachment A

Project Description

Project Title

Parents are the Key (PATK) Teen Driving Safety Initiative

Project Description

CDC intends to use message testing with parents and pediatricians to improve upon existing campaign materials that were designed to inform and engage parents of teen drivers and encourage them to make a commitment to support safe teen driving practices.

Who are we trying to influence?

Primary Audience: Parents of novice drivers age 15 to 18 years old.

What we know about them:

• Parents welcome honest & direct messages

• Parents appreciate new information and tools
• Parents feel it’s important to stay connected to other parents

Secondary Audience: Organizations that reach out to parents and teens about driver safety, including:

• Health care providers

• Educators

• School administrators

• Law enforcement

• Public health community

What do we want them to DO as a result of this communication?

In our planned focus groups, we will be testing creative concepts and messages. Our goal is to use what we learn from message testing to develop final creative campaign materials that will empower parents and pediatricians to be safe driving advocates. Message testing will let us know what these groups want to hear about safe teen driving, and where they want to hear it. Parents can leverage influence at home and set expectations on safe driving as well as share their insights, along with the PATK tools (primarily the Parent-Teen Driver Agreement) with other concerned parents via their Facebook / social media channels, email, and word-of-mouth. Pediatricians can also promote safe driving messages with their patients and the patients’ parents.

How do we expect communications to work towards achieving this?

Content strategy includes:

• Time-saving — focus on short messages and useful tips / tools / facts that are easy to absorb & share,

• Real world — keep tone real, smart, but not authoritarian (think parent-to-parent),

• Parent-to-parent platform — include language that encourages sharing info & assets,

• Commit to safe driving rules — encourage using the Parent-Teen Driving Agreement across all communications

What are we trying to convey?

Our goal is to convey the message to parents that they are a very important source of information pertaining to safe teen driving, and that they can protect their teens more than anyone else.

Supporting statistics:

• Motor vehicle crashes are the #1 killer of teens—about 3,000 young lives are lost every year; that’s up to eight teen-deaths a day that can be prevented.

• New drivers, even straight-A students and "good kids", are more likely to be involved in a fatal crash, which is mostly due to driver inexperience. 

How are we recruiting and screening participants?

Parent participants will be recruited through a 1.5 million+ double opt-in email panel maintained by Survey Sampling, one of the most respected sample vendors in the opinion research industry.  This email source is well-maintained and roughly representative of the American adult population from a demographic perspective.  It is a multi-sourced Internet panel of people interested in participating in online research.  Panel members come from many sources; including banner ads, online recruitment methods, and random digit dialling (RDD) telephone recruitment. Members are recruited exclusively using permission-based techniques.  Unsolicited e-mail (or "spam") is not used in building this panel.  The database is continuously growing. Panel size is monitored to prevent over-surveying as well as under-surveying in an effort to maintain panellists’ interest in participating. Panellists are also offered rewards with each survey invitation, increasing their likelihood of participation. 

Panellists provide demographic information when they join the panel, enabling us to target U.S. adults who have teens in the household.  Potential registrants are sent email invitations offering them an opportunity to participate in a research study.  They complete an online screening survey confirming their interest and availability to participate as well as various other demographic questions.  Non-qualifying individuals are dismissed and provided a small consolation reward.  Registrants are retained and sent a confirmation email regarding their upcoming online focus group session.

Pediatricians will be participating via partnership with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and will complete an online screener.

Incentives

Providing incentives is a standard practice when conducting focus groups. They are typically provided to help ensure that enough participants take part in the focus group (1) and they can serve as a “stimulus [for participants] to attend the session” (2). Parent Focus Group participants will be given a small incentive of $30 for taking part in this data collection; that is the minimum competitive incentive to recruit online focus group participants, according to both Ogilvy and Stratalys. Pediatrician Focus Group participants will be given a small incentive of $75 for taking part in this data collection. This amount is below market value for physicians, but in combination with our partnership with the American Academy of Pediatrics and being strategic regarding the timing of the group, we anticipate that it will suffice. Incentives for participants will be provided in the form of equivalent reward points (parents) and checks (pediatricians).

Parents will be recruited to participate via an online panel. The panel company rewards its panelists for participating in research projects via points. These points can then be converted into cash, gift cards, etc. The panel company will credit any participant that completes the online focus group with the appropriate number of points to his/her member account within 7-10 days of the actual session date.

Checks to pediatricians will be mailed to the address provided by the participant at the end of the focus group session.

1. Making Health Communication Programs Work, National Cancer Institute, 2001 http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/cancerlibrary/pinkbook/Pink_Book.pdf

2. Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research, Richard A. Krueger, Mary Anne Casey, 2008.