SafetyCube progress of the methodology development – September 2015

The development and validation of the methodological framework is carried out within Work Package 3 , which will be implemented by the other Work Packages  (WP4 – behaviour, WP5 – infrastructure, WP6 – vehicle) .

As important first step and basis for the Decision Support System, it was agreed that Work Packages 4-6 should systematically collect and record studies evaluating risk factors and countermeasures. To record all studies in one system, they have all to be coded according to the same system. This turned out to be a big challenge, and the first attempts before the summer vacation had shown clear problems to deal with so many different types of studies and nevertheless achieve a registration that can be used as the basis for summaries and analyses.

During the Technical Meeting, on September 14, the new template and second coding exercise were thoroughly evaluated. While we were quite happy with the progress made, we also realized that next to some improvements on the template, we will have to supply very thorough training and instruction. The guidelines for the analysis of risk factors and evaluation of counter measures, which we have already started to produce since the beginning of the project, were restructured to be more focused on the task at hand, to enable SafetyCube partners to “dissect” studies they read: to understand the underlying design, code the results in the appropriate form, and judge the presence of possible biases.

By end of October, the guidelines and coding template will be finalized and distributed to the wider partnership. On the basis of studies supplied by each of the leaders of WP 4-7, a large scale training session at the November meeting in Gothenburg will be organised.