Workshop Synthesis: Web-based surveys, new insight to address main challenges

This paper summarizes the discussions held during an in-depth six-hour workshop on the challenges of using web for transport surveys. Survey response rates are decreasing worldwide and household travel surveys follow the same trend. To reduce respondent burden and encourage respondents to complete the survey, it may be helpful to improve the questionnaire design or to use web-based surveys. This new media presents some advantages for surveyors and respondents (less costly, always available, etc.), but also some methodological limits, which should be considered (selection bias, data comparability, etc.). The aim of the workshop was to present good practices for implementing web-based surveys. It also summarizes discussions on conditions under which using the web can increase survey data quality. This is a particularly relevant issue, when several media are combined to recruit respondents and collect travel data.