Ferðavenjur Íslendinga - 01.02.1998, Page 30

Ferðavenjur Íslendinga - 01.02.1998, Page 30
28 Ferðavenjur íslendinga 1996 the non-contact rate is higher for men than women, usually because of greater absence from home and more difficulties in reaching the person concerned. Young people also have a higher non-contact rate than older people. In order to counter non-response bias on this account the results have been weighted by sex and age groups. Another type of non-response is due to incomplete an- swers to individual questions. Even though a person may be willing to participate in a survey, he or she may not be ready to answer some of the questions, either because they are too personal or people do not remember or know the right answer. Non-response was not uncommon, for instance, when people were asked about their income, particularly in the first stage of the survey, as will be described more closely below. Instead of disregarding such non-response, it has been corrected for by means of methods described below. Other errors. Other errors fall roughly into three categories: Interviewer errors, processing errors and design errors. Interviewer errors. Sometimes interviewers record wrong answers, skip some questions, mix up the order of the questions or rephrase them in such a manner that their meaning is altered. In the tourism pattern survey these errors were dealt with by hiring interviewers with experience from other Statistics Iceland surveys, by interviewer training and by carefully explaining the questionnaire to them before the survey began. Processing errors. There is always a possibility of making an error when classifying individual “open” questions that call for a classification after the interview is over. This applies in particular to questions on level of education. Such errors may be the result of insufficient information in the raw data, unclear instructions regarding the classification codes and coding mistakes. Every attempt has been made to keep these processing errors at a minimum by careful editing of the data and systematic computer search for any inconsistencies. Design errors. An inadequate structure and design of a survey may lead to results that are inconsistent with the real situation. The wording of questions may cause a misunder- standing and variations in the order of questions may lead to diverging answers. In the first of the three stages of the survey the mistake was made of posing the question on income to all participants without regard to their household status. This caused considerable non-response and uncer- tainty in the answers, especially in the case of sampled teenagers who were asked about the total income of their household, i.e. their own income and that of their parents. This mistake was corrected in the two subsequent stages of the survey by asking only married or cohabiting persons about the combined income of the respondent in question and his or her spouse or partner, while other participants were only questioned about their own income. In order to make the first stage of the survey comparable with the other two, the answers to the question on income were discarded in the processing if a household was composed of more than one grown-up person and the sampled person was neither mar- ried nor cohabiting. 8. Concepts Tourists. A tourist is a person travelling to a place other than his or her usual environment who stays overnight at the place visited for at least one night. Tourism trip. A trip refers to the travel of a person to a place other than his or her usual environment where he or she stays for at least one night. The usual environment of a person consists of the vicinity of his or her home and place of work or study. Thus a stay by crew members aboard a ship does not count as a tourism trip nor does a stay in hospital or prison. Regular trips to private summer houses, however, are in- cluded in tourism even though some people may consider their summer house as their second home. The survey ques- tionnaire included questions on all forms of trips taken by people aged 11-74 but excluded children under the age of 11 years taking trips without the company of the parent partici- pating in the survey. Month. The month of travel is the month of departure even though the greatest part of the trip took place the following month. Type of accommodation. This is classified by the type of accommodation facility, e.g. a hotel, guesthouse, camping site or stay with relatives and friends. If a person has used more than one type of accommodation in the same trip, the type used for the greatest number of ovemight stays is selected. Means of transport. Means of transport refers to that used for the longest stretch of a trip. Destination. Destination is the main destination of a trip or the place where the tourist concemed stays for the greatest number of nights. Organization of trip. Respondents were asked whether they had been assisted by a travel agency in planning a package tour or in some other aspect of planning their trips, for instance hiring a car or procuring accommodation. Tourism expenditure. This refers to the total expenditure in some way associated with the trip. In cases where more than one person travelled together, the respondent was questioned about the total expenditure and the number of persons incur- ring those expenses. Tourism expenditure, therefore, relates to one person only. Income. Married or cohabiting respondents were asked about the combined incomes of themselves and their spouse or partner in 1995. Other respondents were asked about their own income in 1995. Weights and calculations. Totals and percentages are esti- mated by applying weights to each answer with reference to age and sex. Weights are calculated with the following proportion:

x

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