Using Accelerometer Equipped GPS Devices in Place of Paper Travel Diaries to Reduce Respondent Burden in a National Travel Survey
ISBN: 978-1-78-190287-5, eISBN: 978-1-78-190288-2
Publication date: 29 January 2013
Abstract
Purpose — The Department for Transport's 2011 GPS National Travel Survey (NTS) pilot study investigated whether personal GPS devices and automated data processing could be used in place of the 7-day paper diary. Using GPS technology could reduce the relatively high burden that the diary places upon respondents, reduce costs and improve data quality.
Design/methodology/approach — Data was collected from c.900 respondents. Practical changes were made to the existing methodology where necessary, including the collection of information to support data processing. Processing was undertaken using the University of Eindhoven's Trace Annotator. Results from the GPS pilot were then compared to those from the main NTS diaries for the same period.
Findings — There were no insurmountable problems using GPS devices to collect data; however, the processed GPS data did not resemble the diary outputs, making GPS unsuitable for the NTS. The GPS data produced fewer and longer trips than the diary data. The purpose of a quarter of the GPS trips was unclear, and a disproportionate share started and ended at home.
Research limitations — Further work to manually inspect trips identified via validation as unfeasible and subsequently refine the processing algorithms would have been desirable had time permitted. GPS data processing may have been hindered by missing GPS data, particularly in the case of rail travel.
Originality/value — This research used an accelerometer-equipped GPS device to better predict the method of travel. It also combined addresses that respondents reported having visited during the travel week with GIS data to code the purpose of trips without using a post-processing prompted-recall survey.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
Much of the material for the Survey Methodology section of this paper draws upon the National Travel Survey 2011 GPS Pilot, a technical report on the pilot survey management and data collection by Josi Rofique, Alun Humphrey and Caroline Killpack of NatCen (Rofique et al., 2011a).
Similarly, material pertaining to the Data Processing section of this paper summarises material from Processing of National Travel Survey GPS Pilot Data, a technical report prepared on behalf of the Department for Transport by Tao Feng, Anastasia Moiseeva and Professor Harry Timmermans at TU/e (Feng et al., 2011).
The author would like to acknowledge the helpful advice provided by Roger Mackett (University College London), Nadine Rieser-Schüssler (ETH, Zurich), Peter Stopher (University of Sydney), Ashley Cooper (University of Bristol), John Polak (Imperial College London), Andrew Jones (University of East Anglia) and Kyle Roskilly (Royal Veterinary College) that influenced the design of the NTS GPS pilot, and thank David Strnad (MGE Data), Wayne Bull (Forsberg) and Ian Cleaver (Sprint) for the loan of GPS devices for trial purposes.
Thanks also to Lyndsey Melbourne and the NTS team at DfT, and Alun Humphrey and the NTS team at NatCen for their invaluable, ongoing support and advice.
Citation
Sneade, A. (2013), "Using Accelerometer Equipped GPS Devices in Place of Paper Travel Diaries to Reduce Respondent Burden in a National Travel Survey", Zmud, J., Lee-Gosselin, M., Munizaga, M. and Carrasco, J.A. (Ed.) Transport Survey Methods, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 155-180. https://doi.org/10.1108/9781781902882-007
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2013 Emerald Group Publishing Limited