Citation

Hutter M. Blutalkohol 2005; 42(4): 29-35.

Affiliation

Institut fur Verkehrspsychologie des Kuratoriums fur Verkehrssicherheit, A-1031 Wien, Austria

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, International Committee on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety and Bund gegen Alkohol und Drogen im Straßenverkehr, Publisher Steintor Verlag)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Until approximately 20 years ago, personality and attitude tests were applied almost 'exclusively in traffic psychology assessment, which had been originally developed for general research and counselling purposes or clinical matters. This lead to severe criticism followed partly by relinquishment of personality questionnaires in driver assessment and partly encouraged new developments in this field. Thus a catalogue of requirements concerning questionnaires for driver assessment had been worked out in Austria, to provide a basis for the construction of traffic-related personality tests. This means, amongst others construction, standardisation and validation with data derived from the decisive situation of driver assessment (not with data from volunteer samples) and taking into account a tendency to answering in the socially desired way by using both appropriate answer scales as well as control scales. Thus traffic-specific personality and attitude tests can play an essential role in a modern, hypothesis-driven and assessment criteria-related driver diagnostics. They provide data in order to answer the question whether the defined assessment criteria are met or not (in the sense of "indicators" and "counter-indicators"). However, they cannot trace individual developments, but can contribute to answering the decisive question, as to whether the processes of individual changes and developments have occurred to the extent, that the fitness to drive is reached. Hence, psychometric data derived from traffic-specific personality and attitude tests as well as results from the personal interview can be given equal importance and complement one another. In terms of a multimodal approach of diagnostics they are independent data sources, which might prove or question one another, thus providing a broader and more profound basis for the usually highly demanding task of driver assessment.

DWI