Tactical and Strategical Distribution of Driving Self-Regulatory Behaviors for Old and Young Drivers in Turkey

The purpose of this study is to investigate old and young drivers’ self-regulatory driving behaviors in a Turkish sample. Also, it is aimed, to investigate which type of self-regulatory driving behaviors are determined, and to explore the factor structure of self-regulatory driving behaviors in Turkish sample. 120 old and 138 young, a total of 258 active drivers participated to the study. The age range for old driver sample was determined as 60-75 while young drivers’ age range was 21-30. In order to investigate the factor structure of the Advanced Decisions and Patterns of Travel Scale (ADDAPT) (Molnar et al., 2013), it was adapted to Turkish and shortened. The shortened version of the questionnaire includes ‘Life-Goal’, ‘Strategical’ and ‘Tactical’ level items except for the motivational questions related to these decisions. The findings of this study show that the life-goal level items were dropped for both older and younger driver sample. For both age groups the strategic and tactical decisions were clearly separated from each other and found as two different factors. The separation of strategic and tactical self-regulatory driving behaviors for two different age groups may prove the different behavioral mechanism of strategic and tactical decisions. At the same time the content and item differences for both age groups support the idea that the behavioral mechanism for old and young drivers’ self-regulatory decisions may be different. Lastly, the findings of this study also show the importance and prevalence of self-regulatory driving behaviors not only for older drivers but also for younger drivers as well