Safe Speed Forums

Here's a PDF of the survey results for Hampshire Safety Camera Parternership. For once they ask some more interesting questions than the usual stuff:

http://www.safetycamera.org.uk/Survey-r ... eneral.pdf

Some interesting responses, however some duff conclusions I think.

One whoopsy is that 75% had never heard of the partnership. Then they ask where they heard about them. I suspect that most people get confused between the Think! adverts and local advertising so the TV advert was listed high, even though I've never seen it on TV (even in the popular local advertising spots).

However one MASSIVE flaw that they don't address - the responses weren't adjusted to take account of the age distribution. I haven't worked out the exact error, but 30% of the responses were from people over 65, whereas they represent just 18% of the population of Hampshire who are 16 or over.

The questions aren't targetted at drivers specifically, but considering older people are less likely to drive it would skew the responses considerably.

Gareth

Given the "disgraceful positive bias" in the DfT standard questions, I'd say that their survey was excellent evidence to support the proposition that "speed camera support is falling through the floor".

What a shame!

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

In a bit more detail:

Has you awareness of speed limits increased over the last two years?

69.6% say yes.

That scares the hell out of me. We didn't have a problem with speeding before and now our drivers have less attantion available for the road ahead.

3. Do you agree with the statement that ‘Fewer Accidents are likely to happen on roads where cameras are installed’?

44.6%failed to agree

That's a big drop from other surveys.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Finally had a closer look:



Very accurate sample

Some more comments. Bear in mind the last questionaire I compiled was for my GCSE Geography project so this is an unprofessional's eye.



This is a totally unfounded conclusion - the question didn't ask them whether their understanding had improved, merely whether their awareness of the relationship had changed.


This is a DfT standard question. Given the ambiguity and phrasing it is reassuring to see that people did not commit to answer it.

They need to weight the responses according to the local population to give a more accurate picture. It is obvious that the responses are VERY grossly distored towards older respondents and this is likely to affect the figures.

I am just about to get around to submitting an FOI request so I will send a separate email pointing out this problem and see what they say.

Gareth

I was surprised that they had no question as to whether the respondent was a driver or not.

They may even have asked this and other question but not included them in the results. Try asking for a sight of the questionnaire.

If you are asking an FOI question I suggest you ask for a breakdown of each question by the sample types. e.g. for each question what were the views of each age range.

Reckon that will cost you a lot of money to do that. you are only allowed £450 then you will get charged. Think you should ask them some sensible questions if you are going to send a FOI in.

It should already be stored in some kind of system to extract the relevant information, and £450 is 18 hours of work (ie. A LOT). I would imagine that an hour would be optimistic to split various questions by age grouping.

They should have weighted the reponses anyway, it's not difficult or expensive to get special software to do this and I wouldn't criticise them for reclaiming that kind of cost.

Gareth

When I get back to work I must remember to look in the 'Some kind of system' and then go and buy the bespoke software that does that. You have been watching to much star trek.

JJ

Great, start by looking at SPSS, it's the standard statistical software given to first year college students, no Star Trek (or even CSI) technology required.

If you have a data analysis person then they should know how to use it, or at least have the skills to quickly learn that kind of thing. In fact they should have the skills to write programs/scripts to do it from scratch anyway, it's only repetitive calculations.

Gareth

I'm amazed that a purportedly evidence-led organisation is apparently so limited in its ability to interrogate its own data ad hoc. Any public authority needs to be able to innovate, strategise and display accountability through analysis of its own information. And I thought we were poor in the NHS...

It's called obfuscation, Sam.

As an example, see how the following projects are being duplicated at Safety Camera Partnerships around the country:

- Partnership back-office ticket processing
- Online ticket responses and viewing of imagery
- Viewing of camera locations and statistics using online mapping

All of these can be implented in a simple or much more advanced way. Some partnerships have customised a commercial system and others have developed or are developing very impressive systems at great cost, but if there was some pooling of resources and knowledge they would end up with a first rate system common to all parternships and one that is very cost-effective.

Gareth

I note that Hampshire have conducted another survey, this time they wheeled in "MSS Research" and have used a telephone intervew of 500 local residents. The document doesn't go into detail, for instance what time the calls were made, the selection methodolgy etc, but the age groups are better represented, albeit with a bias towards the older groups. Still the same crappy questions though, although the SCP doesn't have much choice.

http://www.safetycamera.org.uk/ps.shtml

After a fault on the telephone line I did a survey for BT, frankly I think they are a very poor method because you don't feek you have time to analyse the question accurately and tend to give a quick answer to get it over with.

Gareth