Psychometric Evaluation of the Safe Road-crossing Behaviors Scale: A Study among Iranian University Students

Background: Millions of pedestrians are seriously injured, disabled, or lose their lives in road traffic accidents annually. The availability of a standard scale specifically for predicting road-crossing behaviors would be beneficial in research applications and in tailoring interventions. Objectives: The purpose of the current research was to psychometrically evaluate the safe road-crossing behaviors scale based on the Prototype Willingness Model (PWM) among college students. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, a purposive and multi-stage sampling method was used to select 315 students from Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences (KUMS) during 2018. The studied social-cognitive determinants from the PWM included attitude, subjective norms, prototype, intention, and willingness. Participants completed a written self-report questionnaire. Data was analyzed using SPSS (ver. 20.0). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with VARIMAX rotation was applied to determine the number and composition of constructs. Results: Five factors were extracted. The calculated Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) value was 0.806. Overall, the PWM constructs explained 64.39% of the variance in the hypothesized model. Cronbach’s alpha for the measured constructs of attitude, subjective norms, prototype, intention, and willingness were 0.87, 0.81, 0.68, 0.71, and 0.61, respectively. Conclusion: The present study provides some support from among students at an Iranian university for the internal validity and reliability of the safe road-crossing behaviors scale. This scale could be used in planning interventions for the promotion of safe road-crossing behaviors among pedestrians.