Children's active school travel: building a toolkit to assist the design, implementation, and evaluation of safe routes to school programs

Abstract

Active school travel is one promising strategy to address the low levels of child physical activity. Yet, active school travel has declined significantly since the 1970s. Active school travel programs, such as Safe Routes to School, have therefore been implemented. Evaluations of these programs demonstrate their potential for promoting active school travel behaviour. However, they are subject to several limitations, including the assessment of active school travel behaviour at the school level instead of the route level, the underutilisation of observational route counts due to the lack of a reliable instrument, limited assessment of the microscale built environment of the promoted ‘safe routes’ due to the absence of a specific
tool, and a distinct lack of theory use, particularly program theory building and testing.
This research address these limitations by building, within the context of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT)’s Active Streets for Schools program, a toolkit to aid the design, implementation, and evaluation of Safe Routes to School programs. This included three research objectives: 1) adapt an existing observational count instrument to align with the ‘safe routes’ focus of Safe Routes to School programs, and test its inter-rater reliability for conducting observational route-level counts of children’s active school travel behaviour; 2) conduct a theory-driven rapid realist review to build, test, and refine a program theory for how, why, and under what circumstances Safe Routes to School programs work or not; and 3) develop and assess the reliability of a field audit tool for assessing the microscale built
environment specific to children’s active school travel and the ‘safe routes’ focus of Safe Routes to School programs.
In study one, the ROute Observation for Travelling to School (ROOTS) instrument was adapted from an existing instrument and assessed for inter-rater reliability. The resultant instrument had good to excellent inter-rater reliability for conducting observational route-level counts to assess children’s active school travel behaviour.
In study two, rapid realist review methodology was used to build, test, and refine an
overarching program theory to explain how, why, and under what circumstances Safe Routes to School programs work or not. The refined theory showed that when Safe Routes to School programs are implemented with fidelity, the program strategies used can motivate children to engage in active school travel; however, the extent to which this motivation translated into engagement was influenced by parental decision making. Importantly, many of the factors that influence parental decision making are contextually driven and appear to be unaddressed by the current suite of program strategies.
In study three, the Field Audit for Children’s active Transport to School (FACTS) tool was developed and assessed for reliability. The tool was found to be reliable and fit for its purpose of assessing the microscale built environment of promoted ‘safe routes’ for children’s active school travel within Safe Routes to School programs.
Overall, the toolkit developed herein addresses several limitations within the active school travel literature base, and has important practical utility for program designers and evaluators designing, implementing, and evaluating Safe Routes to School programs.

Date of Award	2024
Original language	English
Supervisor	Suzanne CARROLL (Supervisor) & Rachel DAVEY (Supervisor)