Household vs. individual survey practices – implications for household travel survey expenditures in Germany

Abstract

Abstract In household travel surveys (HTS), each individual’s behavior in a household is surveyed whereas in individual travel surveys (ITS) only selected individuals are considered as survey unit. Statistical effects of the two survey approaches have been discussed in the literature but no study has looked so far systematically at the content and feasibility/practicality of HTS versus ITS. This paper addresses this gap and analyzes strengths and weaknesses of HTS and ITS based on a comparison of two surveys with similar survey methods, one conducted as HTS and the other as ITS. Descriptive analyses are carried out for the examination of seven research hypotheses concerning methodological particularities of both approaches. The HTS approach is much more efficient from a fieldwork perspective as long as response rates in ITS are not significantly higher. ITS fieldwork survey expenditures per net respondent are higher than in HTS. From a statistical point of view, with the same fieldwork expenditure (and in this case a much smaller sample size) ITS might be, at the most, as efficient as HTS.