Compiles the critical thinking on priority topics in contemporary transport policy and planning contexts. In this title, the contributed papers cover two key themes related to types of decision-making of importance to the development of data collection on both passenger travel and freight movements.

Identifies various challenges to the world community of transport survey specialists as well as the larger constituency of practitioners, planners, and decision-makers that it serves and provides potential solutions and recommendations for addressing them.

This overview of developments in transport survey methods from around the world emphasises survey quality and innovation. It contains selected papers from the International Conference on Transport Survey Quality and Innovation, held in the Kruger National Park, South Africa, during August 2001. The conference covered both passenger and freight transport, but was limited to surveys that collect information directly from individuals or organisations so it excludes traffic counts or other observational data collection. Many delegates were from Sub-Saharan Africa and other less developed regions of the world, so there was also an interest in identifying user needs and exploring what can be accomplished outside the North American/Western European regions of the world. This conference was the eighth in a series of international conferences on Survey Methods held since the late 1970s, the previous one having been held in Germany in May 1997, entitled "Transport Surveys: Raising the Standard".

TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 410: Freight Transportation Surveys profiles the state of the practice in methods and techniques used to survey and collect data on freight transportation. The report also examines issues, identifies gaps in knowledge, and notes areas for potential future research in the area of freight transportation systems.

Collecting, Managing, and Assessing Data Using Sample Surveys provides a thorough, step-by-step guide to the design and implementation of surveys. Beginning with a primer on basic statistics, the first half of the book takes readers on a comprehensive tour through the basics of survey design. Topics covered include the ethics of surveys, the design of survey procedures, the design of the survey instrument, how to write questions and how to draw representative samples. Having shown readers how to design surveys, the second half of the book discusses a number of issues surrounding their implementation, including repetitive surveys, the economics of surveys, web-based surveys, coding and data entry, data expansion and weighting, the issue of non-response, and the documenting and archiving of survey data. The book is an excellent introduction to the use of surveys for graduate students as well as a useful reference work for scholars and professionals.

This synthesis will be of interest to planning, administrative, and traffic officials in state transportation agencies and in metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs); to consultants concerned with the design and conduct of surveys; and to those engaged in developing and applying travel forecasting models. It describes the various facets of planning, designing, conducting, and evaluating household travel surveys. This report of the Transportation Research Board provides information on the manner in which many household surveys are currently carried out and provides comment on the likely changes in the process, in the survey instrument, and in the application of more cost-effective methods of data collection in household travel surveys. This synthesis describes the methods for collection, including survey instrument design, as well as testing and administering the surveys. Information on time and cost requirements is also included, as are descriptions of evaluation and data analysis methods.