The Repository @ St. Cloud State

Open Access Knowledge and Scholarship

Date of Award

12-2020

Culminating Project Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Applied Behavior Analysis: M.S.

Department

Community Psychology, Counseling and Family Therapy

College

School of Health and Human Services

First Advisor

Benjamin Witts

Second Advisor

Michele Traub

Third Advisor

Odessa Luna

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Keywords and Subject Headings

Systematic literature review, framework, behavioural interactions, motorist, pedestrian, city planner

Abstract

Motorist-pedestrian accidents are the product of human behavioural interactions. These behavioural interactions are studied by many different fields to intervene to prevent such an accident. A systematic literature review was conducted to retain articles that targeted motorist-pedestrian-city planner interactions at crosswalks. A Google Scholar search with keywords yielded 973 articles related to pedestrians, motorists, and crosswalks. Following a rigorous search criteria, 60 articles were retained. Those 60 articles were then codified using a classification system. Articles were classified based on their: a) year of publication, b) intervention components, c) crosswalk type, d) location of the observation sites, and e) journal type. The classification system resulted in the creation of a framework that can be used by future researchers to analyze trends across a given period. Results of the study found that of the 60 articles retained from 1977-2020, 43 were from civil engineering journals (71.67%), 11 were from safety journals (18.33%), and 6 were from applied behaviour analysis journals (10.00%). The most common intervention components were the use of antecedent interventions (e.g., adding environmental stimuli to the crosswalk to prompt behaviour) and cross-contextual factors (i.e., the authors evaluated pedestrian and motorist behaviours under more than one treatment, condition, or time of day). Discussion points are generated for the possibilities of this framework based on the present study’s results and shortcomings.

Comments/Acknowledgements

First, I would like to thank my professors and committee members for their steadfast support during my degree. I have learned and been challenged more in these past three years than I have in my entire life. A special acknowledgement to Ben for your persistence in helping me with countless alterations to my thesis during the pandemic. It was your propelling guidance that instilled confidence and motivated me to press onward.

I would like to thank Katharine for her help in completing the final component of my thesis—reliability. Katharine is a stellar behaviour analyst and an up-and-coming researcher. Please check out Katharine’s research at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Katharine_Kalinowski

To my wife, Emma. I could not have completed this degree without your unwavering love and encouragement. I will spend a lifetime attempting to parallel that same devotion.

"As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness around it." —Albert Einstein

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