ADAPTING INTERACTIVE STATED RESPONSE TECHNIQUES TO A SELF-COMPLETION SURVEY

We report here on how we adapted Interactive Stated Response Methods t o use in a self-completion survey of 454 California households to meas ure the market for electric vehicles in California. Electric vehicles are a novel product and have many features unfamiliar to consumers, in particular their home recharging capability and limited range. Reflex ive techniques were designed to draw households into a deeper explorat ion of the lifestyle implications of electric vehicles than can be don e in more typical self-completion surveys, and to stimulate key decisi on processes previously observed in detailed gaming interviews with 51 households. Reflexive self-completion techniques provide a middle cou rse between typical large sample quantitative surveys and small sample , detailed gaming interviews. One of the benefits of the more intensiv e techniques was that participants reported finding the surveys intere sting and return rates were high for a self-completion approach - over sixty percent. We review previous transportation and sociological met hods which inspired our design, describe the design goals and features of our research, and summarize research results pertinent to testing the validity of our approach.