Assessment of Quick-Refusal and No-Contact Nonresponse in Household Travel Surveys

Summarized are the procedures and results of a survey used to obtain information on persons in households who quickly refused or could not be contacted to respond to the 1997 Denver Region Travel Behavior Inventory household travel survey. Quick-refusals are people who hang up the telephone without listening to the full short introduction and the first question of the recruiting call. In this study, 1,000 households that quickly refused or could not be contacted in the household survey were sent a letter and a short survey on household demographics in an effort to obtain limited data about the household. To test the impact of a small incentive on the follow-up survey, half the samples were given a $2 cash incentive, and the other half received no incentive. The survey included questions asking why the households did not respond to the survey as well as some limited demographic and travel questions. The results of the survey showed some differences between the nonresponding households and the households that did respond to the household survey. At the same time, the survey results suggested that trip rates for the two groups might be very similar. The results suggest that the hypothesis that quick-refusal and no-contact households travel more than households responding to travel surveys may not be valid.