assessing the transportation needs of welfare-to-work participants in ...

Interviewing commenced on December 4, 1999 and continued until February 26, 2000.
Interviews were initiated between the hours of 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Monday through
Thursday, between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. on Fridays, between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. on
Saturdays, and between 1:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on Sundays. Interviews were conducted only in
English during the first week of data collection. After translations of the survey instrument were
completed, interviews were conducted in Spanish, Vietnamese and Armenian by bilingual staff
at the SSRC. All survey respondents were mailed a pre-paid phone card worth approximately 30
minutes of phone time to thank them for participating.
The response rate for the survey was 73.4%, 1,645 completed interviews out of 2,346 eligible
households. In all, 6,019 cases were attempted for the survey. Of these, 3,132 were not eligible
due to disconnected phones, unavailability of the CalWORKs participant at the residence
contacted, and wrong phone numbers. Of the remaining 2,887 sample cases attempted, 330
were refusals, incomplete interviews, or cases that otherwise did not result in a completed
interview. Eligibility was indeterminate in 1,021 cases resulting from final dispositions of busy,
answering machine, no answer, and language other than English, Spanish, Vietnamese, or
Armenian. Based upon a conventional algorithm, 36.3% of these indeterminate cases (371) were
estimated to represent eligible respondents (1645 + 330 + 371 = 2346, which is the denominator
used in the response rate calculation).
To obtain 1,645 completed interviews, the SSRC initiated 58,938 attempts to reach the
participants’ households. Of the 1,645 completions, 14% (230) were completed on the first call,
13.7% (226) on the second call, 11.1% (183) on the third call, 9.6% (158) on the fourth call,
7.2% (118) on the fifth call, 6.2% (102) on the sixth call, 5% (82) on the seventh, and the
remaining 33.2% (546 interviews) required eight or more calls to contact the respondent and
complete the interview.
The CalWORKs participants’ interest in the survey topics and cooperation with the interviewer
were generally high. Fully 92.3% of those interviewed were rated by the interviewer as “very
cooperative”. One thousand one hundred and eighty-eight interviews (72.2%) were conducted in
English, 376 (22.9%) in Spanish, 60 (3.6%) in Armenian, 16 (1%) in Vietnamese, and five
(0.3%) in a mix of Spanish and English.
Two types of questions produced responses that required coding by the SSRC. Several “openended”
questions were designed to collect short answer information for which pre-established
response options did not exist. These questions included items such as “What would you say are
the two biggest problems with finding or keeping a job?” and “The last time you took the bus to
go somewhere, where did you go?” The second type of questions requiring coding involved
response options that included an “other” category. For instance, during the trip diary portion of
the survey, respondents were asked “How did you get there (destination of trip)?” The
respondent was read the options: walk, drive a car, ride in a car, take the bus, take the train, or
other. If the respondent reported “other”, an additional survey field was accessed and the exact
response was recorded.
In all, forty survey response items required coding. At the conclusion of the survey, the text
responses of the survey respondents were examined and preliminary coding categories
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