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31
FIGURE 18 Sample handout card requesting name and e-mail address.
why people are not using transit and what the agency can do to discussed that for certain subpopulations, such as current
entice non-riders to switch to transit. Although random sam- non-riders who could be surveyed to understand what
pling would be the best way to understand non-riders' needs in actions a transit provider could take to encourage them to
a transit agency's territory, convenience sampling can be very ride, coverage bias may not be an issue. This being said,
effective and can be done without incurring the high costs asso- there are often some coverage issues and these warrant the
ciated with random sampling by means of telephone and mail use of a variety of survey methods to take advantage of the
surveys. Large employers in the transit agency's area of oper- benefits of each different survey method type.
ation can provide a good base for convenience sampling for a
web-based survey on how to increase transit ridership (assum- An important method to mitigate coverage error is to
ing employees have easy access to computers). develop studies that use multi-method sampling techniques.
In other words, use a variety of survey methods to conduct
Sampling of large employers in the study area can be sup- a study and allow respondents to choose which method is
plemented with intercept surveys of potential respondents at most convenient, thereby increasing the study response.
public areas such as malls, department of motor vehicles Many transit studies have been conducted using multi-
offices, highway rest stops, and high-traffic pedestrian areas method surveys. NJ TRANSIT's Rail Customer Satisfaction
that are in locations relevant to the study. E-mail addresses ePanel study is discussed in chapter six. This was primarily
can be obtained directly or through a simple hand-out/ a web-based survey; however, respondents who were inter-
hand-back instrument and added to a database of potential ested in the study but did not have web access were given a
respondents who might be surveyed. phone option. The respondent was called and, if reached,
surveyed by an interviewer who used the web-based instru-
ment as the CATI script. The interviewer therefore was
MULTI-METHOD SURVEYS TO MITIGATE reading from the exact survey that the respondent would
COVERAGE ERROR have used had they logged onto the web and taken the
survey themselves. A more typical multi-method survey in
Earlier discussion of mitigating coverage error focused on the transit context is seen when an onboard paper survey
understanding whether a significant coverage issue exists provides a web link; therefore, the respondent has the option
within a transit research sample. Furthermore, it has been to participate in that way.
