Kokua Line
Kokua Line
Prying federal survey
aims to map local
travel habitsQuestion: I received a letter in the mail with $2 cash in it from "Gordon Lum, Executive Director of the Oahu Metropolitan Planning Organization" concerning a telephone survey they would be conducting. He said it was part of the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Household Travel Survey. Then someone called at night about the survey and asked all kinds of personal information, assuring me that it would be kept confidential. I was asked to confirm my telephone number (it was read to me with the area code), then I was asked what kind of vehicles we had in the home, including the make, model and year; if we had any bicycles; what type of house we lived in and did we own or rent; then I was asked for my first name, my age and the number of members in the household. After I gave the answers, the woman wanted to know the name of the other members in the household. At that point, I balked. She said that the names were needed to generate a travel log that the user would complete then return to them. I know that the other household members would not be agreeable to doing that so I terminated the interview at that time. Is this survey for real or was this a scam to get personal information from unsuspecting individuals?
Answer: The survey is legitimate, assures Laureen Brennan, transportation planner and project coordinator for OMPO.
The U.S. Department of Transportation conducts the national household-based travel survey every five years, collecting information on daily, local trips, as well as long-distance travel in the United States.
OMPO, as an "add-on program," asked the DOT to collect more localized information by contacting an additional 1,500 households on Oahu, Brennan explained.
"We're always being told we're different from the mainland and so we thought we would verify that," she said. The DOT also is conducting the survey on the neighbor islands, but OMPO is only sponsoring the one Oahu.
In order to come up with 1,500 responses, "a lot of people are being called," Brennan said. The survey began last September and is expected to continue through August.
Brennan explained that the process begins by sending out a letter to various households containing $2 as "as an incentive." However, she said, "It's not an obligation; it's up to the person who receives the letter to participate or not participate."
The recipient keeps the money even if he or she chooses not to participate.
"We've had a number of calls from people who want to send the money back, but we just tell them to keep it or, if they don't feel comfortable, to donate it to a charity," Brennan said. The survey is "entirely federally funded," she said.
Participants will be asked to keep a diary for one day of all the trips the family makes.
Because the intent is to cover as many of the demographic categories as possible, people "will be asked questions that seem personal," Brennan acknowledged, including type of car owned, when it was purchased, the number of people in the household, income range, age, etc.
Also, "we're trying to get a broad spectrum of locations across the island, so a lot of these questions may seem personal but all the details will be held in strict confidence. It's something similar to the Census."
She said her office has received a number of calls questioning the survey from people expressing concerns similar to yours.
"We've (also) gotten a couple of complaints about the people who call and we've passed them on to the contractor (doing the telephone survey) and they've been very helpful about addressing those issues," she said.
The specific local information collected may be folded into the national survey, but "by that time, it will be very generalized," Brennan said. The more specific information will be used by OMPO in "computer models to forecast future transportation trips and travel patterns on Oahu," she said.
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