Redesign of the Dutch Travel Survey : response improvement. Paper presented at the Transportation Research Board TRB Conference on Personal Travel : the long and short of it, Washington, D.C., June-July, 1999.

Non-response in the Dutch National Travel Survey (Onderzoek Verplaatsingsgedrag - OVG) has been a matter of great concern to Statistics Netherlands in the last years. A continuing downward trend in the response level has resulted in an overall response of less than 35% in 1998. A task force investigated the possibilities for improvements and recommended performing a test using the integral ‘NEW KONTIV DESIGN (NKD)’ from Socialdata (Munich). Statistics Netherlands in co-operation with Socialdata tested this design in September 1997 (“Glass House”-project). The NKD resulted in significantly higher response-rates and better coverage of the target population compared to the OVG-design. In March 1998, Statistics Netherlands started implementing the NKD. During 1998, both designs (OVG and NKD) were conducted in parallel. Developments in the OVG since 1985, results of the NKD-pilot in September 1997 and the first results of the parallel running are the themes of this paper. (A)