Using Questionnaires to Identify Travel Barriers: How (Not) to Ask Questions

Abstract

Travel barriers can turn everyday journeys into challenges that hinder activity participation. For two decades, researchers have frequently sought to measure travel barriers through surveys. Questionnaire design shapes respondents’ cognitive processing of questions, making survey reliability, validity, and usability crucial to yielding policy-relevant insights. This study applied a system-based approach called the Problem Classification Coding Scheme (CCS) to critically review existing travel barrier survey questions to assess their consistency with best practices. We carried out a keyword search relating to equity, transportation, and surveys. After carefully considering their relevance to the study and based on the availability of the full questionnaires, we evaluated 29 questionnaires used in 34 studies using the CCS. Overall, we identified 920 problems across 1,850 questions; over 32% of the questions had at least one problem. Six issues—vague or unclear questions, unclear respondent instructions, undefined periods, rolling periods, high detail requirements, and complex mental calculations—represented over two-thirds of the identified problems. Over 58% of the problems also occurred in the “comprehension” category of problem classification. We discuss example questions from the reviewed questionnaires to explain why they are likely to cause reliability and validity issues. We also present a checklist as a practical tool to assist researchers and users of travel barrier research in designing robust instruments.