Evaluation of the Crash Course March 2009 - De Montfort University

Whilst people are often fairly resistant to attempts at persuasion and attitude change,
Tormala and Clarkson (2006) present evidence that suggests that when people
resist attempts at persuasion but cannot create convincing counter-arguments they
tend to lose certainty in their original attitudes and become more vulnerable to future
attempts at attitude change.
Allied with the other findings presented here, there are a number of relevant points to
consider for attitude-change sessions such as Crash Course. These findings suggest
that optimum success should be achieved by making sure that information presented
is personally relevant and easily recalled, can be related directly to the young
people’s actual behaviours (in terms of what they do now and what they can do in
the future), relates as far as possible to their direct experiences, includes emotional
as well as cognitively-based appeals, and is repeated over time with opportunities for
young people to recall and express desirable attitudes.
3.3 ‘Scared straight’ programmes and the use of shocking messages
A number of programmes that attempt to change the attitudes and behaviours of
young people use tactics based around shocking messages or generating fear. As
this is clearly of potential relevance to road safety campaigns such as Crash Course,
it is also necessary to consider the evidence available on such programmes.
The prototype of such programmes was a number of ‘juvenile awareness’
programmes that emerged in the United States in the 1970s. These programmes
typically involved young people who have been identified as ‘delinquent’ being taken
to a prison environment and subjected to ‘scare tactics’ by the inmates. This
experience was intended to be frightening for the young people and to act as a
strong deterrent and prevent them from engaging in future criminal behaviour. The
term ‘Scared Straight’, originally used in a television documentary about these
programmes, became the term most commonly associated with such tactics and
their burgeoning use during the late 1970s and 1980s.
As early as 1983, it was noted that despite the wide proliferation of ‘Scared Straight’
programmes across the United States, only a handful of studies had been carried out
that examined their effects. The results of these few studies were mixed, with little if
any evidence of positive impact on future ‘delinquent’ behaviours (Lewis, 1983).
A number of later studies into the effects of ‘Scared Straight’ style programmes also
failed to produce encouraging results. Not only did most research fail to demonstrate
any positive changes in behaviour attributable to the programmes, a significant
number of investigations actually showed worse results for young people who
attended them, with future offending and recidivism rates either unimproved or
actually increased after attending ‘Scared Straight’ programmes (e.g. Finckenauer
and Gavin, 1999; Petrosino et al, 2008; Feinstein, 2005; Windell and Allen, 2005;
Farrington and Welsh, 2005). One possible reason put forward for this result was
that the prisoners provided role models that the young people found attractive.
McKenna advances criticism of road safety programmes based on shock tactics
highlighting such issues as the relative inefficiency of passive learning as against, for
example, increasing the length of experience under supervision for new drivers
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