Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART)—Necessary for measuring objective risk-taking propensity. For this computerized task, participants are presented with 20 different balloons (20 trials), and told that “the actual number of pumps for any particular balloon will vary.” Participants are instructed to attempt to earn as many points as possible. At the beginning of each trial, the participant decides how many pumps they thought the balloon would hold and input this number. Each balloon inflates for 3 seconds and then either pops or stays intact depending on whether the participant’s wager was above or below the predetermined explosion point for that balloon. If the balloon is pumped past its explosion point, it will pop, and the participant earns no points for that balloon. If the balloon is not pumped past the explosion point, the participant keeps the number of pumps as points. After each outcome, a new deflated balloon appears on the screen and points earned will be added to the total. Each balloon could earn a maximum of 128 points with an explosion point equally likely to occur on any given pump participant to the constraint that within each sequence of 10 balloons the average explosion point was on pump 64. The task will remain the same across the three studies and is a standardized online tool.
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | NHTSA |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2025-03-21 |