PAPER-AND-PENCIL VERSUS PERSONAL DIGITAL ASSISTANT ENABLED SURVEYS: A COMPARISON

Abstract

A customized tool, PARROTS (PDA system for Activity Registration and Recording of Travel Scheduling) was developed to collect both activity data and GPS-data. This tool is currently deployed in a survey that is carried out on 2500 households in Flanders (Belgium). This paper reports some results of a study on the impact of this tool on data quality. To that effect, a paper-and-pencil diary was designed as well. To judge the effect on data quality, various analyses were performed on both the paper-and-pencil and PDA data. The paper discusses the findings on the effects of a computer-assisted data collection tool featuring default answers, pre-defined drop-down lists and many other graphical design elements on data quality.