Respondent preferences in travel survey design: An initial comparison of narrative, structured and technology-based travel survey instruments

Abstract Respondent satisfaction with a travel survey instrument, and broader engagement with the survey topic, is critical to data quality. This research provides an initial investigation into respondent satisfaction of two different travel survey instruments—a paper-based survey and a broadly equivalent smartphone survey—and explores potential cascading effects on data quality. A third instrument, a free-form description of travel, was also requested, to provide an unstructured sketch of how people understand their own travel experience. The findings indicate that different survey instruments will deliver different descriptions of travel, even for the same travel day. While each survey has the potential to collect accurate data, reporting of travel is entirely dependent on the motivation and conscientiousness of respondents. In this research, the effort of completing a traditional paper-based travel survey was identified as problematic. This is contrasted with smartphone survey data that, while perceived by users to be more accurate, was ultimately difficult for participants to validate. The narrative approach of describing travel in personal terms could usefully accompany more structured survey designs.