The household survey was developed with help from Scottish Participatory Initiatives, who have experience in grass roots survey techniques.
It was designed for self completion and comprised of two parts:
- a questionnaire enabling people to give their views about the problems encountered in their everyday travel and suggest improvements, and
- a travel diary to gather information about travel behaviour.
A pilot study was carried out in the Sustaining Dunbar office and we then spent a morning with parents at a local toddler group trialling the survey forms and getting feedback. Following some minor tweaking, the surveys were distributed to all local primary and secondary school pupils during “Walk to School” week in the neutral month of May. Schools were given a small monetary incentive of 20p for every completed form received.
The survey was also available at local libraries, doctor’s surgeries, the Be Green shop in Dunbar Town Centre and at local events such as Family Open Days and school fairs, local pensioner and youth groups also participated, and the household survey was made available on the Connecting Dunbar website. In order to obtain a fair sample, local people were recruited as surveyors to interview residents not covered by the above opportunities. Publicity was in the form of a newspaper article, website information, posters and a town centre shop window display. A total of 520 responses were received from both urban and rural areas, most of which provided a great deal of detailed information.