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An Individual Development Plan (IDP) is a personal action plan. IDPs can be used to set academic goals, explore career opportunities, and develop skills. During the 2022-23 academic year, we implemented IDPs with two groups in university settings: (1) graduate students and post-docs in the NASA-funded ICE-Five-O project; and (2) undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Hawai‘i. Twenty-four participants and their mentors rated various aspects of the IDP program on a scale of 1 (negative) to 5 (positive). Results were strongly positive, with means ranging from 4.1 to 4.8 for participants and from 4.2 to 4.6 for mentors. Overall, 92% of participants reported that they would recommend IDPs to their peers, and 94% of mentors reported that they would recommend IDPs as a mentoring tool. Although relatively few people (15%, or 31 of 207 eligible trainees) opted to participate, results of the pilot clearly show that those who created an IDP found the experience valuable. Future efforts will focus on maximizing participation.
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Keep It Brief and Targeted: Driving Performance Feedback Report Features to Use with Novice Drivers
Driving evaluations aim to ensure adequate skills; however, feedback beyond pass/fail is needed for improvement. Therefore, the goal of this study was to inform driving feedback report design to ensure ease of use and understandability while motivating improvements. Participants ages 18–25 years (n = 521) were recruited from CloudResearch Prime Panels to rate one of nine report design conditions with various combinations of five key features: performance summary presence, action plan (AP) length, AP order, AP grading system, and peer comparison presence; they then completed questionnaires. Participants were more motivated to improve when a summary was present (p = 0.02); they rated reports easier to use if they had a long AP (p = 0.01), a short AP paired with a summary (p = 0.007), or an AP with a number grade (p = 0.016); and they rated reports easier to understand if they had a short AP (p = 0.002) or an AP ordered by worst-to-best performance (p = 0.05). These results suggest that feedback reports designed with a performance summary and short, targeted action plan starting with the biggest area for improvement are likely to motivate action to improve driving skills while being easy to use and understand. Future research should evaluate the effect of such a redesigned report on driving outcomes among young drivers.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2017651
- PAR ID:
- 10470243
- Publisher / Repository:
- MDPI
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Adolescents
- Volume:
- 2
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 2673-7051
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 448 to 458
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/adolescents2040035
