Reference no: EM133298548

Question: What is your opinion of the proposed methodology?

Proposed Methodology

It was the opinion of the ATC that the study should be divided into two stages. The first would be of a "qualitative" nature for the purpose of developing personality and attitudinal questions that would then be used in the second quantitative phase. The general opinion was that face-to-face interviews of 30 to 35 minutes each would be needed for both parts of the study. The use of telephone interviews was considered but rejected because it was feared that they could not provide the depth of answers needed, particularly as "tradeoff" questions were being asked.

Due to the high cost of field research in the United States, it seemed imperative to minimize the sample size. Consequently, a total of a thousand face-to-face interviews during the primary research were considered to be sufficient to provide good precision for estimates from the total sample and from the various subgroups.

The ATC felt that respondents should be selected on the basis of four criteria: (1) past travel experience, (2) future travel intentions, (3) travel desire, and (4) interest in Australia. Those who should be interviewed would include people who had never traveled and had no intention or desire to travel. The term travel was defined as long-haul international travel for pleasure purposes, excluding Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean. In addition, people with immediate family living in Australia were to be excluded.

In the interests of efficiency, it was felt that the sample should overrepresent key markets; hence, a screening process was to be used in the interviews. The screening questions were to be administered in sequential fashion, with the first criterion being "past travel experience." The sample structure emphasized those with extensive travel experience, as research indicated that this was a prime market for Australia. The recommended structure was as follows:

Past travelers: Traveled in the last five years to a long-haul destination for pleasure, with or without a stated intention to travel.

N = 600 broken down as:

At least 200 "experienced travelers"

At least 200 with "stated travel intention"

At least 200 with "interest in Australia"

Potential travelers: Stated intention to travel in the next three years to a long-haul destination for pleasure, without past travel experience.

N = 600 broken down as:

At least 100 whose primary intended destination is not UK/Europe

At least 200 with "interest in Australia"

Non/latent travelers:

N = 600 comprising persons with no past travel experience and no stated intention to travel, but who:

Have an expressed desire to travel (to a long-haul destination for pleasure purposes)

Express an interest in visiting Australia

Although a random sampling technique was desired, the sample was to be heavily biased toward upper-income groups and not representative of the general mix of the U.S. population. Further sampling restrictions that were felt to be necessary included the following:

1. No interviews from persons who lived in rural areas or small urban centers.

2. Under sampling from the East Coast, with the exception of New York.

3. Under sampling from the southern states, with the exception of Florida.

4. Oversampling from California, Hawaii, New York, Texas, and Florida. The reason for this was an observation of incidence patterns based on data generated from past international visitor surveys by the ATC.

5. Use of a form of multistage sampling in which cities would be the primary unit. For reasons of cost, no more than 20 cities should be selected. This selection of cities should not be "purposive"; however, it should be a random selection of cities within the constraints specified next.

One of the reasons for the suggested sampling procedure was that the ATC had data on a large sample from the United States known as Travel Pulse, plus data from an earlier ATC study known as the International Visitors Survey. It was felt that the new study should provide data that would be cross-comparable with the results from the previous studies.