In 1997 the Transport Data Centre (TDC) of the New South Wales Department of Transport commenced the Household Travel Survey (HTS), a continuous survey of personal travel behaviour in the TDC Study Area, an area which is broadly equivalent to the Greater Sydney Metropolitan Region. The HTS is conducted using a 24-hour travel diary and a face-to-face interview collection method. In any survey where the face-to-face interview method is used to collect data, the major cost will usually be for interviewer time. An interviewer must travel to a household and conduct an interview at that household. The relative cost significance of these two processes will depend on the nature of the survey. In a survey with a large geographical scope such as the HTS, interviewer travel time becomes the major influence on costs. This paper discusses a number of options for reducing this cost without significantly affecting the quality of data collected. (A)
Samenvatting