As part of this project Dr. Gerald Lucker ran an evaluation of the impact of our project. The Paso del Norte Health Foundation funded us to promote cycling in the Paso del Norte area by providing information on available biking routes to (1) current bike riders and (2) prospective riders in El Paso, Texas.  The evaluation was based on the maps and brochures of existing bike trails, dirt bike trails, and paved roads that are currently used by active cyclists.

        Originally, an experiment was designed to determine whether having access to these bike maps and trail brochures increases the (1) frequency and (2) duration of bike use among a group people who have access to the maps as compared to an equivalent group who haven't been given these maps.

        Local retailers who sell bikes (i.e., Kmart, Target, Wal-Mart, etc.) as well as specialty bike retailers (e.g., Bicycle Company, Bicycle World, Crazy Cat Cyclery, Ride On Sports) were recruited to distribute research materials to all individuals who make a bike purchase during a three-month period of time (or until 450 sets of material have been distributed). 

        Materials consisted of two different information packets (Appendices B1 and B2).  All packets contained an invitation to participate in a "Paso del Norte Bicycle Survey".  The conditions of study participation were clearly explained (i.e. to participate, individuals will have to complete and return the enclosed bicycle survey and a monthly bike use log, and agree to be contacted in six months to complete a follow-up questionnaire).  Two-thirds of the packets (300) also contained bike maps and brochures as described above.   “experiment” and “control” packages were randomly ordered, and then sequentially numbered.  The original plan was for retailers to distribute packages in the numbered order on the envelopes. 

        As an incentive to participate, all individuals who complete all parts of the study were to be entered into a lottery to receive either one of six professional quality bikes valued at $650 or one of the many prizes such as cycle-computers, socks, water bottles, etc.  In addition, all participants were to receive a t-shirt as a “Thank You” for their participation.

        We were not able to create partnerships with the big retailers so we had to work only with the local bike shops. For a more detailed explanation for this effort please see Section #4. When it became clear that it would not be possible to collect data at large retail chains at the point-of-sale, the question of whether having cycling maps would positively impact the activity levels of those given maps versus no maps would not be addressable. 

        Since the original project intended to assess whether having bike trail maps would increase the use of bikes, and consequently increase the intensity and duration of exercise, it was decided to continue to focus on bike trails maps, but to change data collection strategies.  The principal investigator, in consultation with the Foundation decided to assess the attitudes of current cyclists and cyclist supporters about the relative usefulness of a group of different types of bike trail maps.

        
        Final refusals from the major retailers came at about six months into the project duration.  Therefore it was critical to gather data as soon as possible.  Therefore it was decided to conduct two surveys, a long survey and a short survey (Appendix A1 and A2 respectively), at bike events that took place during the summer of 2005. 

        While doing the surveys some people did not wanted to invest too much time responding therefore we went ahead and develop a short version of the survey so we could get that information anyhow.