The Article: Passenger and Cell Phone Conversations in Simulated Driving

The Article: Passenger and Cell Phone Conversations in Simulated Driving

Frank A. Drews, Monisha Pasupathi, and David L. Strayer

University of Utah

After reading the article, consider the following:

1. What was measured? How did the researchers measure driving errors?

2. What did they do?

a. Describe how well you think the sample of participants in this
study generalizes to other groups of people.

b. In this study, participants were told to have a conversation about
a time when “their lives were threatened.” Do you think that the
results of this study would be different if the conversation were
about something else? How so? Why?

3. How do you know one thing caused another? Evaluate the internal
validity of this study. Explain your answer.

4. To whom or what can we generalize the results?

a. Do you think that the findings from this study would generalize to
other cultures? Do you think that samples of college students in
Mexico, Italy, and Germany would generate similar results? Why or why
not?

b. Evaluate the external validity of this study. Explain your answer.

c. How well do you think the driving simulator generalizes to
real-world driving? What would you change to improve the
generalizability of the simulator?