# Perceived Accessibility: Impact of Social Factors and Travel Modes in Melbourne's West
## 2 Materials and Methods
### Data Collection
Secondly, the website link and the QR code were sent via emails to staff and students of the project institution to invite qualified persons and their contacts residing in the Point Cook area to complete the survey. Finally, an offline version of the Qualtrics application on mobile digital devices (e.g., phones and tablets) was used to collect survey responses onsite at public locations, such as shopping centres, train stations, bus stops, and the local library. The data collection was conducted on both weekdays and weekends at different times and lasted for over two months--14 February to 18 April 2022. These approaches ensured that a diverse range of respondents, including residents, workers, students, shoppers, and travellers, was recruited. For ethical reasons, only adults of age 18 and above were recruited to participate in this study. For ensuring that only valid responses were gathered, two screening questions were introduced at the beginning of the questionnaire, as follows. (1) \"What is your age?\" If the respondent chose \"below 18 years\", the survey ended automatically. The second screening question (2)--\"In the past six months, have you lived, worked or visited Point Cook for any reason?\"--aimed to ensure that respondents performed reasonably regular daily activities in the study area and were therefore qualified to share their experiences with perceived accessibility, safety, and service quality of public transport in the area. A respondent needed to respond in the affirmative to progress with the actual survey. Each survey took about 10-15 min to complete. Average time for respondents to complete the survey was 12 min. By the end of the survey period, a total of 194 had attempted the survey, of which 156 satisfied the screening criteria and provided valid responses and were \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l} \hline \hline
**Perceived accessibility using existing travel mode** \\ A1. Considering how I travel today, it is easy to do my daily activities. \\ A2. Considering how I travel today, I am able to live my life as I want to. \\ A3. Considering how I travel today, I am able to do all activities I prefer. \\ A4. Access to my preferred activities is satisfying, considering how I travel today. \\
**Perceived accessibility using public transport only** \\ A5. It is easy to do my daily activities with public transport. \\ A6. If public transport was my only mode of travel, I would be able to continue living the way I want. \\ A7. It is possible to do the activities I prefer with public transport. \\ A8. Access to my preferred activities is satisfying with public transport. \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Questions measuring perceived accessibility among survey respondents. therefore used for the present analysis. Over 150 collected responses provided a wide array of results for data analysis. Table 3 summarises the profile of the survey respondents. Table 3 shows that a majority of participants were women (57.1%), middle-aged (63.2%), and employed (62.1%). Personal vehicles (45.5%) and public transport (44.3%) were the primary modes of travel, with most respondents (65.4%) being frequent public transport users (i.e., travelling by public transport two or more days per week). More than a quarter of the respondents (28.2%) had more than 20 min walking distance to the nearest public transport station/stop from their homes or workplace within the study area.