Research and analysis

Request for feedback on National Travel Survey questionnaire changes

Seeking views on 14 proposals to remove, alternate or change questions in the National Travel Survey (NTS) questionnaire in preparation for survey year 2019.

Documents

National Travel Survey feedback proposals

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National Travel Survey questionnaire: 2018

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email webmasterdft@dft.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Details

The purpose of this request for feedback is to seek your views on 14 proposals to remove, alternate or change questions in the National Travel Survey (NTS) questionnaire in preparation for survey year 2019 and years after that. The proposals are contained in the documents. Respondents can use this survey link to provide responses.

We would value your feedback on the proposed changes to understand any concerns before we make a decision on implementing them. The proposals suggest changes to the household, individual and vehicle questionnaires. There are no proposed changes to the diary element of the NTS.

We think we are now at the limit of the number of questions we can reasonably ask in the survey. As a result, the department is now looking to remove some questions from the survey. We are doing this for 2 reasons. Firstly, to ensure that we are only asking questions in the survey that are relevant for users and secondly to reduce the burden on respondents.

Without removing some questions (and thus freeing up questionnaire space), we will not be able to add new questions to meet user need in developing areas of interest for transport, or we risk the survey becoming too long with the potential for the quality of responses being affected.

We propose 3 ways to reduce the length of the questionnaire, by:

  • removing questions completely (although these questions could be asked on the panel survey as described above)
  • keeping questions the same, but reducing the frequency of them. Usually this would be by alternating questions in either odd or even years
  • reducing the scope of questions

We would like users to give their views on the proposals that are of interest to them, including whether they agree or disagree with them, and if disagreeing what use(s) the respondent makes of the data derived from the questions.

Published 10 May 2018