Summary

The Omnibus Household Study is a monthly telephone survey of 1,000 randomly selected households in the nation, designed to gather information regarding the subjects’ commuting habits and awareness of various federal safety initiatives through market communication campaigns.

M. Davis and Company, Inc. conducted this survey for over 3 years, inclusive of almost 30 monthly waves between 2000 and 2007.

Process

M. Davis and Company, Inc. was responsible for managing a very rigorous protocol of iterative components that occurred every thirty (30) days, as a monthly survey with quick turnaround and tight deadlines. Some of these monthly components were as follows:

• Usability study
• Expert panels
• Cognitive interviews
• Questionnaire pre-tests
• List-assisted RDD samples
• ID-Plus to purge business/non-working numbers
• Monthly interviewer training
• Coordinated, simultaneous, multi-call center data collection
• CATI interviewing
• Toll free numbers
• Refusal avoidance and conversion
• Remote and onsite Interviewer monitoring and validation
• Data weighting
• Variance estimation
• Data processing
• Survey database documentation

Results

The monthly survey results served as an information source for the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) modal administrators, who used the data to support congressional requests, inform planning and decision making, as well as create internal DOT performance indicators. The survey was also used to test new initiatives and improve the Department’s knowledge base, regarding prevailing attitudes and perceptions of the American public about different modes of travel and key transportation trends.