Impaired Driving Gallup Poll Methodology

400 Seventh Street, S.W.

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U.S. Department

of Transportation

National Highway

Traffic Safety

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Information Collection 2127-0579

Impaired Driving Gallup Poll Methodology

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) mission is to save lives, prevent injuries and reduce traffic-related health care and other economic costs. The American people expect government to protect their interests by working toward greater traffic safety by striving to keep unsafe drivers off the road, reduce the threat of impaired drivers, provide consumer information on impaired driving prevention, and collaborate with law enforcement agencies and national organizations to keep the Nation’s streets and highways safer.

Last year, more than 17,000 people were killed in alcohol-involved crashes. There is much to be done to reduce that unacceptably high number. The National High Visibility Enforcement Crackdown, held during a two week period including Labor Day, is one such effort to reduce impaired driving crashes.

The next High Visibility Enforcement paid media advertising period and enforcement mobilization will be held August 18 – September 4, 2006. Insight into the public’s perception of impaired driving over the Labor Day holiday is vital to enable NHTSA to craft stronger, more current impaired driving messages that may yield a greater awareness and prevention of impaired driving during the holiday period.

In addition to directing NHTSA’s key enforcement messages related to impaired driving over the August Crackdown, the survey also will enable NHTSA to heighten awareness of the knowledge of the public’s attitudes, behaviors and actions as they relate to impaired driving, and serve as a media “hook” to garner local and national attention to the issue of impaired driving. Equally important, the survey will be the basis of strong sound bites and talking points for the Secretary of Transportation, Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and key advocates of the High Visibility Enforcement Crackdown. The survey results also will be incorporated into NHTSA’s overall strategic communications plan for future enforcement mobilizations and impaired driving efforts throughout the year.

The objectives listed in the next section summarize the information to be gathered in this study.

 

Survey Objectives:

The survey will be conducted to gauge public attitude toward impaired driving and intervention to prevent impaired driving during one of the most traveled holiday weekends of the year, ascertain who is driving after drinking holiday parties, what could happen if you drink and drive during the Crackdown, the perception of enforcement of impaired driving laws and if they should be increased, perceptions of penalties pertaining to an offense of impaired driving, and whether existing laws should be strengthened to take impaired drivers off the road.

The survey results will be weighted to reflect national representation. Results will be broken out by age, income, race, geography, education, number of children in the home, etc. The survey will provide NHTSA with fresh insight into present perceptions in a sample of the American public, so that the media and law enforcement can report and conduct appropriate countermeasures to the tragedy of impaired driving in the United States.

• Be vital to directing NHTSA's key enforcement messages related to impaired driving during the August Crackdown by allowing us to identity current perception of impaired driving behavior among general audiences;

• Provide new data to be compared to past (related) survey results, to identify specific trends in impaired driving as it relates to enforcement and prevention of the act of impaired driving;

• Heighten awareness and knowledge of the public's attitudes, behaviors and actions as they relate to impaired driving, particularly around key times of the year as with the High Visibility Enforcement Crackdown;

• Create strong sound bites and talking points for representatives and key advocates (including law enforcement agencies and advocacy organizations) of the High Visibility Enforcement Campaign;

• Communicate new ideas and information to the public and media outlets, thus enhancing the likelihood that the media will cover the issue of impaired driving over the High Visibility Enforcement Crackdown;

• Be used to evaluate the use of enforcement efforts to stop impaired driving during key holiday periods such as the High Visibility Enforcement Crackdown among general audiences;

• Be incorporated into NHTSA’s overall strategic communications plan for future enforcement mobilizations and impaired driving efforts throughout the year.

Methodology:

The attached is a telephone survey to be conducted over a two week period. Gallup expects to obtain 600 completed interviews out of initial sample size of 1,300 to 1,400 for a targeted CASRO/AAPOR response rate of 45% to 50%. Given our past experience with extremely short questionnaires as proposed for this study, we believe that this is a realistic goal. Each survey will take approximately 5 minutes to complete. Prize incentives will not be offered to encourage participation.

Gallup will employ a 5+5 call design for this study, with five initial calls to secure household cooperation and five calls to complete the interview. Gallup uses a CASRO/AAPOR formula, of the most conservative, in calculating survey response rates. Owing to the truncated data collection period for this survey, limited to two weeks, Gallup is targeting a 45% to 50% response rate.

This sample will have a margin of error of +/- 4.9% given a proportion at 50%.

The data will be collected and analyzed by Gallup. The data collection will be completed in a two week period and statistical analysis will be completed in one week.

This projects primary point of contact at Gallup – for consultation on aspects of the survey design, collection and analysis – is Dawn Royal, phone number 248-936-4152 (Email: dawn_royal@gallup.com).

NHTSA will conduct this survey to yield a better understanding of the public’s perceptions regarding impaired driving. The survey will also allow the Agency to identify whether their efforts to combat impaired driving are useful to the public. The information gathered will enable the agency to clearly address the way to tailor messages and programs

The total amount of burden hours for this survey will be 50 hours.