The Way We Move – Approaches for Survey Data Handling of the German Mobility Panel

The German Mobility Panel (MOP) is designed as a rotating panel over three consecutive years. People report their everyday-mobility by filling in a trip diary over a period of seven consecutive days. The multi-day, multi-period design has been nearly unaltered since 1994. The longitudinal panel approach allows the research of the dynamics and variations in travel behavior. However, the survey design results in a high respondent burden, thus endangering the quality and completeness of the collected data. Results are affected by attrition effects within one week (declining completeness of the individual report or discontinue the report completely) and reporting errors.
To ensure the necessary data quality the following approach is applied: We identify attrition effects within one week using regression models to check and evaluate whether a significant decrease in the mobility key figures over the course of the reporting week can be identified on a collective level. The characteristics of the MOP allow for the identification of those participants, who are causing these significant declines (e.g. trip-making against the background of the socio-economic characteristics). ... mehrThis allows for an active exclusion of these bad risks for the data quality. Moreover, the reported data of each participant is subject to an individual plausibility check. For this purpose, we developed a visualization tool, which graphically displays the mobility behavior of each survey participants at a glance for the plausibility check process. Thus irregularities and minor faults can easily be identified and corrected. Experienced and trained staff can easily detect inplausibilities, using this visualization tool. This allows for an immediate check of the outcome. Persons with blatant deficiencies in their report can be excluded: The procedures result in a high consistency and quality of the data for further use. All checks together ensure the necessary continuity and high data quality of the MOP-data.