Ashton Surveys

Surveying as a Tool

No matter what type of project is being planned, whether it’s a road, bridge, house, transit route (etc), a business plan for an organization or social service program, or a creating a new or revamping a product, there is a need to gather information (historical and current) and collect data (survey) for analysis.

Ashton Associates has a variety of survey instruments available to choose from and any survey instrument can be tailored to the specific needs of the Client.  All Ashton Associate survey instruments incorporate three main data sections. They may include but are not limited to:

General Demographic Information
Commute Travel and Mode
Attitudinal and Behavior Information
Questions specific to a product or inquiry
Opinion Analysis

Clients are encouraged to identify additional demographics, commute travel patterns including mode, and subjective information including attitudinal and opinion responses specific to their population.

Ashton Associates is dedicated to bringing a product to life, quickly, and efficiently utilizing a new web based surveying tool that reduces cost and increases turn around time.

Purpose: to conduct surveys, tabulate and analyze the data, and provide custom reports for a variety of clients in a cost effective and efficient manner.

Service:  provide the survey design, methodology, implementation, analysis, and reporting of results; develop a survey plan and instrument; administer the survey, provide data entry and quality control; document methodologies, analyze data, and summarize results.

Survey Products: Ashton Associates can use any client designed survey form and upload it to the web site or prepare it for optical scan data tabulation, or take questions from a client and design a survey for the web site or prepare the survey for optical scan data tabulation.  Any survey can be mailed or used as a telephone instrument. 

Survey Process:  

Ashton Associates currently hosts a website devoted entirely to web based surveying, ashtonsurvey.com.  Our software is capable of analyzing surveys that are both electronic and paper thus offering our clients either an emailed survey or a scannable paper survey or a combination of both.

Ashton Associates uses a proprietary software product that can be exported into most spreadsheets, databases, and statistical software packages. Our survey software consists of a Windows program used to design the survey and analyze results and a PERL-based web component to host the online experience and handles the security, encryption and results aggregation.

A completed email survey goes directly to an encrypted website hosted on Ashton Associates’ website. Survey data is downloaded, verified, and entered into a proprietary database. The electronic data collected is virtually free of errors. Prior to the survey, Ashton Associates conducts an End-to-End test with identified client staff, and if any changes are needed, conduct a retest.

Paper surveys are scanned into the companion software and verified. The software is a Windows based forms-processing package for surveys and tests. The software recognizes optical marks (bubbles and checkboxes), machine-generated characters (OCR) and barcodes to scan and recognize data.  Handwritten areas can be captured as image fields for later key entry or viewing. Our software has built-in exception handling that easily locates and allows us to correct or verify any erroneously marked forms (i.e. - a person fills in two marks for a question and crosses out one).

The electronic and paper data results are integrated to one electronic file. To ensure the highest level of accuracy, Ashton Associates “validates” all surveys prior to analysis.

Report Products:

Surveying various populations (employees, students, clients, and customers) is an efficient planning tool, one that can quantify and qualify behavior and choice.

An Employee Survey can act as a company’s primary source of information on employee commuting habits, new product assessment, opinion gathering for human resources/benefits, to name a few. The purpose of a survey is to update existing data or to create a baseline, and review employee option and interest or commute mode and pattern. The information gathered can be used for various transportation planning efforts and environmental studies, and can include various social economic questions to allow for the study of direct economic impacts on the various aspect of the company policies. To take a sample click here.

Our surveys usually gather information over either a 5 or 7 day period depending on a client’s work week. However, a snap shot survey (one-day) survey can also be created. To take a sample one-day survey click here.

In addition, surveys can be designed to gather all of the information necessary to comply with Federal, State, or local regulatory reporting requirements.

Survey results include:

• Summary data on all quantifying questions
• Summary data on behavior and choice
• Additional data depending on specific crosstabs
       For example in a transportation survey crosstabs could include:
• An analysis of employee and customer parking and transit availability
• A comparative snapshot to project future demand using a range of arrival/departure times for population
• An analysis of regional transportation system
  using to-be-defined geographic zones and percent
• Potential market population by zones, determine the potential new markets and impacts
• Compare costs, convenience, and time of all options