Psychometric Scales Survey

Abstract

This data originates from a paper-and-pen mail-out survey that consisted of three components: a questionnaire asking for person and household characteristics, three psychometric scales covering the topics risk propensity, variety seeking and environmentalism and a one-day travel diary. The goal of the survey was to estimate latent variable mode choice models in which the pychometric scales serve as indicators for the participants attitudes. The survey also served as a pretest for a larger survey in which the psychometric scales are combined with GPS-based one- week travel diaries. During the survey, 2000 questionnaires were sent out to respondents living in Canton Zurich in 2 waves during summer and fall 2010. For the diary, the respondents were assigned a survey day that was a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday to capture only ordinary weekdays. 2.7% of the letters were returned due to invalid addresses, of the 1946 potential respondents with valid addresses 274 returned at least one questionnaire resulting in a response rate of 14.1%. However, not all respondents return all parts of the survey and not all of the returned questionnaires were usable for later analysis. After cleaning the questionnaires of 222 persons remained that are giving in this data set.