PILOT TESTING OF ALTERNATIVE ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES AND SURVEY INSTRUMENTS

Traditionally, pilot surveys have involved pretests of the survey instrument and administrative procedures to be employed in the main survey. Such pilot surveys usually have attempted to pretest a single version of the survey instrument and the administrative procedures and to seek appropriate refinements. By using examples from the Dade County On-Board Transit Survey and a Midwest regional travel survey, it is argued that an important and underused part of a pilot study is comparisons between various alternative administrative procedures or survey-instrument components, in which each alternative is foreseen to have both advantages and disadvantages. The pilot study is likely to provide considerable information on the relative merits of the alternatives tested and will lead to improved design of the final instrument or procedure. Such testing may lead frequently to decisions that can have extensive impacts on response rate, response quality, or survey cost.