The Manchester Driver Behaviour Questionnaire: a cross-cultural study

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Abstract

The aim of the present study was to investigate if the original factorial structure of the Manchester Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ) was replicated in Finland and The Netherlands. A postal questionnaire survey of drivers was carried out in Britain, Finland and The Netherlands. Exploratory factor analysis together with target (Procrustes) rotation and factorial agreement indexes were calculated to investigate the applicability of Finnish and Dutch versions of DBQ. Results of the factor comparisons showed that the DBQ four-factor structures found in Finland and The Netherlands were congruent but not perfect with the target structure found in Britain. Reliabilities of the scales were around the same level as in the British data. In addition to the four first-order factors, two second-order factors (deliberate violations and unintentional errors) were found in all three countries which supports the original structure by Reason et al. [Ergonomics 33 (1990) 1315]. Issues related to cross-cultural use of traffic behaviour questionnaires are discussed.

Introduction

It has been estimated that in 90–95% of traffic crashes human actions are a sole or a contributory factor (Rumar, 1985). Hence, most of the traffic crashes result from driver malfunctioning rather than from a technical failure of the vehicle. Based on his model of human error, Reason et al. (1990) divided human risk behaviour to errors and violations, and developed a survey instrument, Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ), to measure these concepts in driver behaviour.

In their first study about DBQ, Reason et al. (1990) showed that driver errors and violations are two empirically distinct classes of behaviour. They defined errors as ‘the failure of planned actions to achieve their intended consequences’ and violations as ‘deliberate deviations from those practices believed necessary to maintain the safe operation of a potentially hazardous system’. Unlike errors, violations were seen as deliberate behaviours, although both errors and violations are potentially dangerous and could lead to a crash. Reason et al. also found a third DBQ factor, which they named “slips and lapses”. This factor included attention and memory failures, which can cause embarrassment but are unlikely to have an impact driving safety (Parker et al., 1995). Since errors and violations result from different psychological processes, they should be treated differently (Reason et al., 1990). Subsequently, Lawton et al. (1997) extended the violations scale by adding new items. Factor analysis of this extended violations scale showed that violations can be split into two distinctive scales according to the reason why drivers violate. Aggressive violations contain an interpersonally aggressive component whereas “ordinary” violations are deliberate deviations from safe driving without a specifically aggressive aim. In the DBQ literature, mainly violations—not errors or lapses—have been related to crash involvement. Among elderly drivers, however, relatively high error and lapse scores have been reported to predict involvement in an active accident, while passive accident involvement has been associated with high scores on the lapse factor (Parker et al., 2000).

In addition to studies conducted in the UK, the DBQ has been used in several international studies. To date, DBQ data have been collected in Australia (Blockey and Hartley, 1995), China (Xie et al., 2003), Greece (Kontogiannis et al., 2002), Finland and The Netherlands (Lajunen et al., 1999, Mesken et al., 2002), New Zealand (Sullman et al., 2000), Sweden (Åberg and Rimmö, 1998), and Turkey (Sümer et al., 2002). The original three-factor (errors, violations, lapses) or four-factor (errors, lapses, aggressive and “ordinary” violations) structure has been broadly replicated in most studies, although small differences in factor structures have been reported. In their study conducted in Western Australia, Blockey and Hartley (1995) extracted three factors, distinguishing between violations and dangerous errors. The content of the factors differed slightly from those of Reason et al. (1990), the factors being named as general errors, dangerous errors and dangerous violations. Åberg and Rimmö (1998) factor analysed the DBQ responses of a large sample of Swedish drivers, finding the same error and violation factors as in Reason et al.’s (1990) original study. The lapses, however, were split into inattention and inexperience errors. Sullman et al. (2000) studied the DBQ responses of truck drivers in New Zealand, and found four factors, which they named as errors, lapses, violations and aggressive violations. The most distinctive factor structure has been found among Chinese drivers. Xie et al. (2003) administered a 24-item version of the DBQ to a sample of 363 Chinese drivers including both professional and non-professional drivers. The exploratory factor analysis resulted in three factors. The first factor included six error and six lapse items whereas the second factor had eight violation and one lapse item. The third factor consisted of two error and two lapse items. Hence, the main distinction between errors and violations was found also in this study, although the factor structure was different from the usual three- or four-factor structure found in Western countries.

Although the three- or four-factor structure of the DBQ seems to occur in various studies conducted in different countries and language areas, the cross-cultural stability of the DBQ is far from that of “Big Five” (Costa and McCrae, 1985) or Eysenckian three personality factors (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1991/1996). Most of the studies using the DBQ have established “national scoring keys” for the DBQ. For example, the Swedish DBQ makes a distinction between inattention and inexperience errors. Although the specification of a national factor solution may provide important information for studies conducted in one particular country, cross-national comparisons become difficult.

In addition to different factor structures and scoring keys, the number of items has varied considerably between DBQ versions used in different studies. Since the number of items can influence the psychometric characteristics of the scale, the comparisons between studies using, say, 24-item and the 104-item scale used in Sweden by Åberg and Rimmö (1998) are problematic. In conclusion, various versions of the DBQ, different sampling strategies (e.g. postal survey, road-side surveys) and different target populations (e.g. professional drivers, elderly drivers) all undermine the ease with which cross-cultural comparisons of the DBQ factor structure can be made. The aim of the present study is to investigate the equivalence of the DBQ factor structures in samples of British, Dutch and Finnish drivers. Traditional psychometric analysis (reliabilities) and exploratory factor analysis with target rotations were performed to similar large samples of British, Dutch and Finnish drivers.

Section snippets

Participants and procedure

The data reported here were collected as a part of a large survey of aggressive driving. Samples of 2000 drivers were selected from the Finnish register of car owners, the electoral register in the UK and the register of telephone users in The Netherlands. In Finland and Britain, an equal number of men and women were selected. Since it was not possible to get this kind of stratified sample in The Netherlands, the Dutch sample was a random sample of telephone users. Samples were representative

Reliability analysis

Alpha reliability coefficients for the DBQ scales for three nationalities are listed in Table 3. In all three samples, “ordinary” violations scale seemed to be the most internally consistent (α=0.75–0.80) whereas the “lapses” scale had the lowest alpha values (α=0.64–0.69). Reliability analysis indicated, however, that removal of any of the items would have led to decrease in internal consistency. DBQ scale scores showed the highest reliability coefficients in UK and lowest in The Netherlands.

Discussion

Self-reports can be a very useful and efficient means for studying aberrant driving behaviour. At their best, anonymous surveys can provide reliable in-depth information about behaviour, as well as about the motives and attitudes leading to risky driving. One of the widely used instruments for measuring self-reported driving is Manchester Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ). In addition to many studies conducted in UK, the DBQ has been used in several studies in other countries. In these

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Jolieke Mesken for her help in data collection and translation of the questionnaires. This research was supported by the grants of the European Commission (contract no. ERBFMBICT972398), and the Finnish Organisation for Traffic Safety (Liikenneturva). Ajoneuvohallintokeskus is thanked for providing the names and addresses of car owners in Finland.

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