DOI: 10.3886/icpsr34909.v1
title: Volusia County Metropolitan Planning Organization (VCMPO) Model Calibration and Home Based Travel Survey, 2001-2002
title: Version 1

description: The 2001-2002 Model Calibration and Home Based Travel Survey was a study conducted in Volusia County, Florida to investigate the travel habits and patterns of residents of the county. Respondents were asked to record their travel and activities for a 48-hour period. They were also asked for detailed information regarding their trips, including mode of transportation, trip purpose, departure and arrival times, and number of passengers. This data collection contains seven datasets: (1) a master data file, (2) a household characteristics data file, (3) a household member characteristics data file, (4) a household trips data file, (5) a data file containing the results of a survey given to public transportation users in the county, (6) a household weighting file, and (7) a household member weighting file. Demographic variables include gender, age, employment status, household size, number and type of vehicles available to household members, household income, and whether respondents had a valid driver's license at the time of the survey.
description: The primary purpose of the Volusia County Travel Survey project was to collect information that will allow for a better understanding of the travel habits and patterns of residents within Volusia County.
description: The survey design employs the general principles of the Tailored Design Method. An integral part of the design involved using a multi-method, multi-instrument approach that included both telephone and mail recruiting and allowed for mailback, phone and Internet responses. The sampling frame for this survey included all resident households within the study area. The survey administration was divided into three phases. The first was the pre-contact phase where pre-contact letters were sent to those selected in the sampling. Others were invited to participate through the Public Awareness Campaign. The second phase was the recruiting phase in which phone calls were placed to those on the random sample list who had phone listings, requested participation, collected Stage 1 (household information) data and assigned an initial travel day. Packets were mailed to those on the list without phone numbers, including printed survey forms, Internet access information and assigning a travel day. Materials were also provided to those recruited through the Public Awareness Campaign. The third phase was the retrieval phase where survey responses by phone, mail and Internet were tracked. Follow-up reminders were also provided to all who agreed to participate. An acceptable retrieval window was set to ensure that the data collected involved recollections of reasonably recent trip-making. For three two-day periods during November 2001 and February 2002, the Project Consultant team of TEI Engineers and Planners and the Resource Systems Group conducted the household travel study in Volusia County, Florida with the purpose of reporting regional travel patterns and preferences to the Volusia County Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO).
description: The first part of the survey questionnaire consisted of household information. These data elements are used to classify respondent households as independent variables in travel demand models, and to compare the sampled households with actual study area households for which Census data are available. The second section of the survey questionnaire concentrated in collecting information about the individuals within the household. A third section of the survey questionnaire obtained information on Transportation Priorities for residents of Volusia County. The final section of the survey, the stated preference portion, was designed to analyze the degree to which differences in travel time, fares, headways and station access affect choice between commuter rail and auto options.
description: The data has not been weighted. Datasets 1 through 5 include a weight variable, WEIGHT, that users may wish to use in analysis, in addition to the household and member weight files (Parts 6 and 7).
description: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Standardized missing values.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Presence of Common Scales: N/A
description: Response Rates: The response rate for the study was 24 percent.
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS0: Study-Level Files 
 DS1: VCMPO Model Calibration and Home Based Travel Survey, 2001-2002 Master File 
 DS2: Household Data File 
 DS3: Members Data File 
 DS4: Trips Data File 
 DS5: VOTRAN Data File 
 DS6: Household Weighting File 
 DS7: Members Weighting File
description: Metropolitan Travel Behavior Survey Series
description: computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI), mail questionnaire, web-based survey 
In each dataset, the data for several cases appears to have been shifted. ICPSR cannot confirm the accuracy of this data collection.
Part 5, the VOTRAN Data File, appears to contain data from an on-board survey conducted by VOTRAN and was not administered by the Volusia County Metropolitan Planning Organization. It appears to have been included in the data collection for comparison and analysis.
It appears that all of the datasets, excluding the VOTRAN Data File, can be linked using the household-level variable PASSWORD.
 For additional information, including final reports and information regarding survey design and execution, please refer to the Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive.
description: The universe for this study includes households within Volusia County, Florida. Smallest Geographic Unit: traffic analysis zone (TAZ)
description: To obtain a respondent pool, an address-based mailing list was purchased that was representative of the population of Volusia County. The mailing list of 6,300 names served as the sample for both the pilot study and the main survey. The pilot study included 630 names, and the balance of respondents was divided into two waves that constituted the respondent pool for the main survey. In order to ensure complete geographic coverage, the household sample was drawn from geographic sub-areas. Currently the Volusia County Metropolitan Planning Organization (VCMPO) has the county divided into six planning regions. These six planning regions are consistent with the Volusia County Comprehensive Plan planning regions. Once the survey was conducted, geographical stratification was possible because the households were geocoded by coordinate, allowing them to be "tagged" by any system of zones. Data from a similar study conducted in 1997, which served as a guide for this study, was provided by the VCMPO and were then used to ensure that an even distribution of surveys was being completed throughout the county. In total, two days of travel data were collected from 1,397 households resulting in a sample of 13,408 trips over 2,794 travel days. The project's scope of work specified that the error margin for trip generation rates should be +/- 5 percent with 95 percent confidence overall and +/- 10 percent for selected sub-areas. The target sample size of approximately 1,500 travel days was selected based on an assumption that the coefficient of variation for trip generation rates would be 1.0.