Multimedia Program to Promote Positive Bus Behavior

The Attitudes and Beliefs regarding Bus Climate items consisted of a total of 27 questions that assessed drivers in the following areas: (1) relationships with students; (2) understanding how to respond to student behavior; (3) interactions with students; (4) drivers' perception of their own bus climate; (5) communication with other drivers; and (6) departmental support for behavior management. For each of the attitudes and beliefs items, drivers were asked how much they agreed, or disagreed, with key statements. For example: "Bus drivers treat students respectfully." The second attitudes/beliefs items assessed drivers' job satisfaction by asking for the driver's level of agreement with statements such as, "I feel like my job is important." Response options were the same for all attitudes/beliefs items: "1=Agree a lot, 5=disagree a lot."

Drivers' self-efficacy was assessed by two sets of items. The first set of items assessed drivers' confidence in knowing best ways to deal with misbehaviors. These included 10 items that asked drivers to rate their level of confidence in knowing how to handle specific student misbehaviors such as inappropriate behavior or students physically hurting other students. The second set of items assessed drivers' confidence in using specific strategies. These were four items developed from the program content; e.g., "How confident are you that you could always restate the behavior rule every time a student argues with you?" Each of the self-efficacy items used a 5-point rating scale (1=very confident, 2=somewhat confident, 3=not sure, 4=doubtful, and 5=not at all confident).

The student misbehaviors items assessed drivers' perception of frequency of student misbehavior occurrences. The items asked drivers to indicate how often student misbehaviors occurred, such as inappropriate language, students damaging or littering the bus, or students threatening or bullying other students. Responses were on a 5-point scale: "1=All of the time, 2=most of the time, 3=about half the time, 4=rarely, and 5=never."

. Seven knowledge items were developed to test drivers on specific program content from the two main program modules: 1) techniques for creating a positive and safe environment on the bus (i.e., positive environment) and 2) effective strategies for correcting misbehaviors when they occur (i.e., correction strategies). Each item was presented as a multiple-choice question, with 1 correct response and 3 distractors. Each of the 7 items was coded "1" for correct and "0" for incorrect answers. A mean score was then calculated to create a scale.

Items in the intention-behavior scale, adapted from the Parenting Scale by Arnold, O'Leary, Wolff, & Acker (1993),were presented with text anchors on each continuum For example, at the left side of a row of circles a text response represented the more effective response to the student interaction (coded as "7"). At the right side of the row of circles a text response represented the least effective response to the student interaction (coded as "1"). The driver chose the circle corresponding to how he or she would respond. For example, for the statement, "When I correct a student for misbehavior," the response anchors presented were "I state the rule in my correction" (best response; 7 points) and "I say whatever needs to be said without thinking too much about the wording" (least effective response; 1 point). If the driver chose the second circle from the right, the response was coded as a "6." Item scores were summed and a mean score calculated.

Bus drivers were asked to report the number of referrals they had written within the last 30 days.