Telephone Survey Question-By-Question Justification

Telephone Survey Questionnaire

Question-By-Question Justification

Screening Questions

Q1: This question will be asked to assure that the respondent is in a safe place from which to conduct the interview.

Q2: This question will identify if the respondent is on a cell phone or a landline phone. If the respondent is on a cell phone, then no household member selection procedure for multiple eligible respondents will be needed because the cell phone will be treated as a single user device. If the respondent is on a landline phone, then the interviewer will ask for the eligible household member having the next birthday.

Q3-8: These questions will determine the eligibility of the contacted person to participate in the survey. Respondents must be drivers age 18 or older that have consumed alcohol in the past year.

Core Demographics

Q9-10: These questions ask the respondent’s age (Q9) and sex (Q10). They will allow assessment by these demographics of the relationship between site HVE level and: (1) awareness of enforcement activity, and (2) perceived risk of an alcohol-impaired driver being stopped by law enforcement officers.

Driving Information

Q11: This question will identify if the respondent is a frequent or infrequent driver.

Q12: This question will ask the amount of driving conducted after dark. Alcohol-impaired driving is far more prevalent during nighttime hours.

Q13: This question asks the type of vehicle typically driven by the respondent.

Q14/15: These questions will be used to gauge the respondent’s general risk taking as a driver. Respondents will be asked whether or not they tend to go faster than the prevailing traffic (Q14) and the number of times they have been stopped in the past year for a traffic violation (Q15).

Drinking Behavior

Q16-17: These questions concerning quantity of alcohol consumption have been shown to be predictive of drinking problems. Combined with later CAGE questions on this survey, they will be used to categorize respondents as being at high risk for alcohol-impaired driving, or not at high risk for alcohol-impaired driving. This project will assess differences between these two groups in their perceptions of enforcement activity and perceived risk of an alcohol-impaired driver being stopped by law enforcement officers.

Q18: This question asks the location where the respondent most often drinks alcohol. Studies show that about 50 percent of drivers arrested for DWI had their last drink in a bar or restaurant.

Drinking and Driving Behavior

Q19: This question asks the frequency of drinking and driving in the past 30 days. It serves as a prelude to the drinking quantity question that follows.

Q20: This question asks the amount of alcohol consumed during the most recent drinking and driving episode. This study will assess whether there are reported differences between sites differing in their levels of HVE in reported drinking quantity prior to driving.

Q21: This question asks if the respondent had deliberately avoided driving after drinking alcohol in the past 30 days. The level of reported avoidance behavior will be compared across sites differing in their levels of HVE.

Problem Drinking

Q22-25: These questions from the CAGE Questionnaire have been validated in identifying alcoholism. Combined with Q16 and Q17, they will be used to categorize respondents as being at high risk for alcohol-impaired driving, or not at high risk for alcohol-impaired driving.

Perceived Risk of an Alcohol-Impaired Driver Being Stopped by Law Enforcement

A major objective of this project is to assess the relationship of level of HVE to the public’s perceived risk of an alcohol-impaired driver being stopped by law enforcement.

Q26: This question explores whether the respondent has noticed any recent fluctuation in the visibility of law enforcement officers.

Q27-30: These questions explore community members’ perceived risk of being stopped by law enforcement for alcohol-impaired driving by approaching it from several different directions. Q27 asks the general likelihood a driver will be stopped. Q28 asks if a stop is typically by design (i.e., the result of pre-determined police procedures) or by chance occurrence. Q29 switches to the level of control the driver may have, asking how easy or difficult it is for a driver to avoid being caught by the police. Q30 asks the relative likelihood of different adverse outcomes; being stopped by police versus getting into an accident.

Program Awareness

This project will also assess how well different documented levels of HVE penetrate public awareness of enforcement activity.

Q31: This question asks the respondent if s/he has seen or heard about an effort by law enforcement officers in the respondent’s community to enforce the drinking and driving laws.

Q32-33: If a respondent says s/he has seen or heard about an enforcement effort in the local community, the interviewer will ask when during the day the respondent thinks the enforcement is occurring (Q32) and its perceived regularity (Q33).

Q34-35: Q34 will ask about exposure to enforcement messages. If the respondent acknowledges seeing or hearing enforcement messaging, Q35 will ask the source of the messages.

Q36-38: These questions explore whether community members believe that local police use checkpoints as part of their enforcement efforts (Q36), and if so, whether the respondent thinks that sobriety checkpoints have been used recently (Q37) and whether the respondent has driven past one (Q38).

Q39-40: These questions explore whether community members believe that local police engage in saturation patrols or similar types of concentrated patrol efforts to enforce traffic laws (Q39), and if so, whether police at times use these concentrated patrols to enforce the laws against drinking and driving.

Remaining Demographics

Q41-46: These questions allow assessment of the relationship between HVE level and awareness of enforcement activity/perceived risk by ethnicity (Q41-42), race (Q43), education (Q44), student status (Q45), and income (Q46).

Zip Code

Q47: This question will confirm that the respondent lives in the selected demonstration site community.

Telephone Status

Q48-51 These question results will be used to weight the data. They will identify if the respondent is a dual phone user (both cell phone and landline) and whether dual users are cell phone mostly. Two questions (Q48/49) are for those interviewed using cell phones, the remaining two questions are for those interviewed using landline phones (Q50/51).