Validating the Perceived Active School Travel Enablers and Barriers–Parent (PASTEB–P) Questionnaire to Support Intervention Programming and Research

Abstract

A child’s ability to participate in active school travel (AST) is complicated by several factors. Of particular note are parental controls, which are informed by their perceptions of the local built and social environments, assessments of their child’s skills, and convenience preferences, among other considerations. However, there is currently a lack of AST-specific scales that include validated parental perception measures related to such notable barriers and enablers, or those that tend to frame their AST decision-making processes. Framed within the social-ecological model of health behaviour, the aims of the present paper were thus threefold, specifically to (1) outline and test the construct validity of measures delineating parental perceptions of barriers and enablers to AST, (2) evaluate the reliability and consistency of the developed measures, and (3) connect these measures to develop broader constructs for use in the Perceived Active School Travel Enablers and Barriers–Parent (PASTEB–P) questionnaire. To achieve these aims, a mixed-methods approach featuring cognitive interviews and surveys, along with qualitative (thematic analysis) and quantitative (Cohen’s Kappa, McDonald’s Omega, and confirmatory factor analysis) analyses, was applied across two studies. The validation processes of the two studies resulted in the development of fifteen items comprising seven distinct constructs (barriers: AST Skills, Convenience, Road Safety, Social Safety, and Equipment Storage; enablers: Supportive Environment and Safe Environment) related to parental perceptions of AST. The developed PASTEB–P questionnaire can be used to inform and evaluate AST intervention programming and can be applied for AST research purposes.

Supporting children’s participation in active travel: developing an online road safety intervention through a collaborative integrated knowledge translation approach

“…This study was undertaken within the context of a regional Active and Safe Routes to School (ASRTS) initiative in Southwestern Ontario, Canada featuring an ongoing school travel plan (STP) programme. The onset of COVID-19 pandemic, however, propelled this regional STP programme evaluation to shift part of its focus towards developing additional programming tools (Buttazzoni, Pham, et al, 2023 ; Clark et al, 2023 ) and new multicomponent road safety interventions to use in future STPs for its primary target group: children between the ages 9–14 and their parents. 1 Consequently, the present study included AST experts and practitioners from relevant professional fields from across the Canadian province of Ontario—the most populous province at ~ 15.5 million people (Ontario Ministry of Finance, 2023 )—to investigate the latter focus regarding multicomponent intervention design.…”

Applying the multiphase optimization strategy to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of an online road safety education intervention for children and parents: a pilot study

“…Similarly, RQ3 was addressed via statistical analyses of items extracted from the validated Perceived Active School Travel Enablers and Barriers (PASTEB—P) parent questionnaire and the Physical Activity Parenting Practices (PAPP) item bank [ 96 , 97 ]. The PASTEB—P questionnaire measured two types of parental AST perceptions (e.g., parental controls and perceived AT barriers).…”