CHAPTER 49: ADELAIDE DRIVING SELF-EFFICACY SCALE (ADSES)

Description

The Adelaide Driving Self-Efficacy Scale (ADSES) is a self-report questionnaire designed to measure an individual’s perceived abilities as they relate to 12 driving-related activities/conditions and is loosely based on self-efficacy theoretical models, such as that postulated by Bandura, that argue that a belief in one’s own ability to organize and execute the necessary courses of action are necessary to achieve goal attainment (George, Clark, & Crotty, 2007). The ADSES is composed of 12 driving scenarios, such as driving in heavy traffic or driving at night, in which the subject is asked to rate how confident he or she feels when performing or if asked to perform those scenarios along a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 is not confident and 10 is completely confident. The measure has a maximum score of 120 with higher scores signifying that the subject has more self-perceived driving ability. The ADSES can be completed in less than 10 minutes.

Psychometrics

Developmental research established that the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was α = 0.98 and could not be improved by deleting any of the 12 items, indicating a high degree of internal consistency (George et al., 2007). The same study found that overall scores for the control group (n = 79; mean age: 41 years) were 110.3 for men and 109.7 for women while for the intervention/cerebrovascular accident (CVA) group (n = 81; mean age: 67 years) scores were 88.5 for men and 65.9 for women, suggesting that the ADSES is a valid tool able to discriminate levels of driver self-efficacy in both healthy controls and CVA populations (George et al., 2007). Criterion validity of the measure was determined by comparing ADSES scores with on-road driving test scores of 45 healthy controls (mean age: 60 years) where it was determined that of those that passed (n = 22) had a mean score of 108 on the ADSES, while those that failed (n = 23) scored only 96 (George et al., 2007). Similar results were found for a CVA cohort where those that passed (n = 14) scored 107 and those who failed (n = 21) scored 96, suggesting that 96 may be a possible cutoff point when considering a subjects self-perceived driving ability with actual ability (George et al., 2007). A subsequent study of 40 subjects (average age: 65 years), who were 17 months post-CVA, found mean ADSES scores to be 103.50 (McNamara, Walker, Ratcliffe, & George, 2015). The same study found that questions on the assessment exhibiting the least confidence for the group were driving at night (25%), planning travel to a new destination (12.5%), driving in unfamiliar areas (10%), and parallel parking (10%); whereas those displaying the most confidence were responding to road signs and traffic signals (95%), driving in a local area (90%), and maneuvering through a roundabout (87.5%) (McNamara et al., 2015). Further results explored the Driving Habits Questionnaire and the ADSES and found that how far participants drove and how much they limited their driving to their local area was moderately associated with self-reported confidence levels at 0.35, p = 0.027 (McNamara et al., 2015). Similar results were found for those drivers who avoided or found difficulties driving in the rain, driving on high-traffic roads, and parallel parking, which occurred more often in women, were also associated with lower self-reported confidence at r = 0.63, p = 0.000 (McNamara et al., 2015).

Advantages

The ADSES is a fast and simple measure whose results can be used in a number of ways. For example, it can assist in identifying those who are likely to stop driving due to low self-efficacy scores, which can enable interventions aimed at minimizing the potential negative consequences associated with driving cessation and its effect on quality of life or it can identify those people who are at a heightened risk of reduced safety when driving, thus allowing for the development of intervention strategies to modify those risk-associated driving behaviors (George et al., 2007).

Disadvantages

There is a limited amount of research pertaining to the assessment and that which is available found that both gender and the interactions between diagnosis and gender to be associated with ADSES scores (George et al., 2007). Also, a study of 6 post-CVA subjects (mean age: 64 years) found the presence of a ceiling effect on all items, which could be the product of difficulty of subjects being able to delineate between previous driving ability and the potential impact that stroke has on current driving ability (Stapleton, Connolly, & O’Neill, 2012).

Administration

The ADSES is a self-report questionnaire in which the subject is asked to consider how confident they feel doing 12 driving-related activities. He or she is then asked to quantify that level of confidence along a scale of 1 to 10, where 0 is not confident and 10 is completely confident.

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