A mainstay of much analysis in transport planning is the household travel survey, along with a variety of other surveys, that together provide an information base for policy development, modelling, and the development and testing of alternative courses of action. An important issue in using these sources of information is that of assessing the quality of the survey that produced the information. The response rate is not, however, an adequate measure of the quality of a survey. Furthermore, there is a need for a clear and consistent method by which to compute response rates, so that planners and analysts can be sure that they are comparing like with like. In this paper, the best method of computing response rates is investigated. Secondly, other measures that might be used to assess quality have been proposed. Two that are directly applicable to household travel surveys conducted by any of the available methods are trip rates and non-mobility. In this paper, a review of the research into these measures of quality is discussed and then their use is illustrated in a particular survey, carried out in New South Wales. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E214666.
Samenvatting