Pre-Service Teachers’ Competencies in Road Safety Education: Design and Validation of a Questionnaire

Although pre-service teachers play a crucial role in promoting safe mobility among children, there are no validated instruments to assess their civic competencies, knowledge, and behaviors in road safety education. Existing questionnaires primarily target the general population or college students, and thus it remains unclear whether future teachers are adequately prepared to deliver road safety education. This study aims to design and validate a tool to assess pre-service teachers’ behavior in situations related to traffic safety and their knowledge of road safety education.. The designed tool is a questionnaire made up of 32 items distributed across five dimensions. The questionnaire’s content was validated through the judgment of eight experts, who ensured the relevance and adequacy of its items. The confirmatory factor analysis of data obtained from a pilot sample was used to examine the questionnaire’s structure, and reliability was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. After analyzing the responses of 388 participants, the results suggest that the questionnaire’s overall structure is adequate and satisfactory reliability coefficients were obtained. The confirmatory factor analysis supported the proposed four-factor structure, indicating good model fit. These findings suggest that a valid and reliable diagnostic tool can identify the road safety training needs of future teachers and inform curriculum design and targeted educational interventions to enhance road safety competencies in schools.