Potholer
Active Member
I've got a test on wednesday for stats which is gross enough but within the next week I've got two other assignments due. One is an experiment I'm designing but oh god I don't know what's going on. It's for psyc, designing an experiment to stop people speeding down this really steep hill in Dunedin. The normal design for social psyc experiments is something called ABAB, where A is the period of time where you just take data (like watching and counting how many cars speed) and B is the intervention (like putting up a sign saying slow down) and during B you sit and count to see whether it's made a difference. I saw this other experiment that found something interesting - they put up a sign saying " ___% of people drove at the right speed through here" which decreased the number of speeders. Normally, in the second A, without a sign up, the speeders go back to speeding but they found that there were less speeders in the second baseline (the A time period) than the first one and they think it's because they put the sign beside the speed limit sign and people came to associate one sign with the other. So I thought I'd test this but I can't use an ABAB, it'd be an ABAC (a baseline, an intervention, a baseline, a second different intervention) but then I'm seeing if the second baseline is going to be higher than the first but if I introduce another intervention, what if the THIRD baseline is affected by the B intervention, not the C one so can I do that and the most horrible thing is that I had a brainwave while writing this and I'VE LOST IT.
I know that the feedback method works, even though its really not cost effective. Ok ok wait, normally with social psyc you intervene to fix something but I need more data before I can fix it. I need to know if putting a warning sign beside a speed sign will make the speed sign effective. But the effect will wear off.
Ooo oo I think there was another experiment saying that if people tend to try to match the speed of others. The association thing between signs will only work for those drivers who saw the intervention sign. Any new drivers wouldn't have the association. I want to see if the proximity of a speed warning to a limit sign does anything and THEN I can look at something more cost effective than feedback. And I can suggest that in my conclusion "More research needs to be done on effective signs" Wait wait wait. No. Right now, we know feedback is effective, we want other signs that are effective without the cost. So intervention one can be a tried and true "___% of people travelled at the right speed through here yesterday" and the second could be "watch your speed, steep hill" or something and then "watch you speed". Maybe a reason for not speeding will make people obey more.
Maybe I'll try different coloured signs. The flatmate said he always obeys the REDUCE SPEED NOW signs cos they're big and red and scary. That % experiment found their blue signs to work. I'll need to find the experiment by these people who found no effect at all, maybe they used a different colour.
WHAT SHOULD I DO.
Ok ok, I'm going to test the effectiveness of different signs. The only hiccup is that I haven't found any literature about sign wording. Maybe that's it though, there IS no literature. But there must be because my lecturer said that saying "please stay off the grass" has been found to be more effective than "keep off grass". Which makes me worried. But I still have a few days to work that out.......
Yup, that's what I'll do, look at sign wording. Cost effective non-feedback signs.
I know that the feedback method works, even though its really not cost effective. Ok ok wait, normally with social psyc you intervene to fix something but I need more data before I can fix it. I need to know if putting a warning sign beside a speed sign will make the speed sign effective. But the effect will wear off.
Ooo oo I think there was another experiment saying that if people tend to try to match the speed of others. The association thing between signs will only work for those drivers who saw the intervention sign. Any new drivers wouldn't have the association. I want to see if the proximity of a speed warning to a limit sign does anything and THEN I can look at something more cost effective than feedback. And I can suggest that in my conclusion "More research needs to be done on effective signs" Wait wait wait. No. Right now, we know feedback is effective, we want other signs that are effective without the cost. So intervention one can be a tried and true "___% of people travelled at the right speed through here yesterday" and the second could be "watch your speed, steep hill" or something and then "watch you speed". Maybe a reason for not speeding will make people obey more.
Maybe I'll try different coloured signs. The flatmate said he always obeys the REDUCE SPEED NOW signs cos they're big and red and scary. That % experiment found their blue signs to work. I'll need to find the experiment by these people who found no effect at all, maybe they used a different colour.
WHAT SHOULD I DO.
Ok ok, I'm going to test the effectiveness of different signs. The only hiccup is that I haven't found any literature about sign wording. Maybe that's it though, there IS no literature. But there must be because my lecturer said that saying "please stay off the grass" has been found to be more effective than "keep off grass". Which makes me worried. But I still have a few days to work that out.......
Yup, that's what I'll do, look at sign wording. Cost effective non-feedback signs.
