Hazard anticipation of young novice drivers - SWOV

5.2.2. Participants
Both tasks were completed by three groups. The groups were:
• Learner drivers on the day that they successfully passed the driving test
(n=30; 47% male; mean age = 20; SD = 2.6).
• Novice drivers that all had held their driving licence for eighteen months
(n=76; 50% male; mean age = 21.6; SD = 1.8).
• Experienced drivers that had held their driving licence for more than 10
years (n=34; 53% male; mean age = 41.8; SD = 5.7).
Participants of the first group (the learner drivers) were recruited at test
centres of CBR. After candidates have heard they passed the driving test,
they have to wait at the examination centre for the official documents.
During this time, they were asked to do the tasks. None of the candidates
refused.
For the group of novice drivers a sample from another study (De Craen,
2010) was used. This was a longitudinal study about the effects of driving
experience on 'calibration' in young novice drivers (see Section 3.3.2 and
Section 4.1.3). In this study, participants kept a diary (on internet) about their
driving experience from the moment they successfully had passed the
driving test. Participants for the mentioned study of De Craen were also
recruited at test centres of CBR. Of the participants that were asked to
participate in that longitudinal study, 8% refused. None of participants in the
sample of the longitudinal study (thus the ones that partook in that study)
refused to partake in the present study. When the participants completed the
tasks of the present study, they all held their driving licence for eighteen
months. Of the seventy-six participants in this group, thirteen had reported
at least one minor crash in traffic (reported crashes on for instance parking
areas were excluded) on their internet diary during the past eighteen
months. Every four months during three consecutive weeks the novice
drivers also had to report how many days per week they had made use of a
car as a driver.
For the group of experienced drivers, the sample of the aforementioned
longitudinal study was used too. For this longitudinal study, addresses of
experienced drivers were randomly selected from the database of the Dutch
Vehicle Technology and Information Centre (RDW). None of the experienced
drivers in this sample refused to partake in the present study.
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