01479155

Component

https://doi.org/10.3141/2351-03

http://scholar.google.com...bell&publication_year=2013

Stagnant budgets and growing rates of Internet access have increased the appeal of replacing traditional survey methods with electronic ones. Online surveys are particularly appealing in the public transit industry because of the expense and logistical difficulty of surveying customers onboard buses and trains. It is therefore critical to understand, quantify, and test the differences between onboard versus online transit survey data. Traditional hypothesis tests are designed to show that two sample statistics most likely come from different populations. However, failing to find a difference cannot be interpreted as evidence that there is no difference. Furthermore, a difference may be statistically significant but so small as to provide no practical insight (which often happens when working with large sample sizes). Statistical equivalence testing provides an analytical framework with which to evaluate whether two data sets are similar enough to be interchangeable (i.e., statistically equivalent). The paper describes statistical equivalence tests conducted on customer satisfaction data collected onboard transit systems and data collected electronically with e-mail lists from users of the same systems. Researchers compared proportions of satisfied customers across various economic and travel behavior characteristics between these data sets. Within the chosen threshold of .05 (statistics within 5 percentage points of one another), one of the two data sets evaluated shows strong evidence of equivalence between onboard and online survey methods, while the other data set shows strong evidence of nonequivalence. Findings support the idea that, at least in some cases, online surveys can substitute for onboard ones.

01517273

13-2893

English

pp 23–29

2013

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board

9780309286992

Print

Figures (7) ; References (8) ; Tables (7)

Data files; Internet; Statistical analysis; Transit riders; Travel surveys

Equivalence tests

Data and Information Technology; Public Transportation; I70: Traffic and Transport

PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Feb 5 2013 12:36PM

• Benchmarking Disaggregate Customer Satisfaction Scores of Bus Operators in Different Cities and Countries
• Benefits of Real-Time Transit Information and Impacts of Data Accuracy on Rider Experience
• Calibration of a Public Transport Performance Measurement System for Switzerland
• Doing Business Around Transit Corridors: Survey Research on Business Perceptions of Fixed-Guideway Transit Projects
• Dynamic System Optimal Routing in Multimodal Transit Network
• Effect of Parking Charges at Transit Stations on Park-and-Ride Mode Choice: Lessons Learned from Stated Preference Survey in Greater Vancouver, Canada
• Effects of Fare Payment Types and Crowding on Dwell Time: Fine-Grained Analysis
• High-Load Transit Line Passenger Transmission and Productiveness Efficiencies
• Intraurban Rail Access: Policy Implications of Five Revealed Perspectives from a Q-Sorting Exercise in Three Australian Cities
• Large-Scale Transit Schedule Coordination Based on Journey Planner Requests
• Multiobjective Optimization Model for Transit Fleet Resource Allocation
• Passenger-Focused Management Approach to Measurement of Train Delay Impacts
• Passengers’ Perception of and Behavioral Adaptation to Unreliability in Public Transportation
• Pedestrian Route Choice of Vertical Facilities in Subway Stations
• Perspectives of the Operational Performance of Public Transportation Agencies with Data Envelopment Analysis Technique
• Potential of Low-Frequency Automated Vehicle Location Data for Monitoring and Control of Bus Performance
• Unbanked Transit Riders and Open Payment Fare Collection