Car Preferences

Keywords: survey, contingency table, ordinal response

Description

These data were collected as part of a project for the Federal Office for Road Safety conducted by the Research Institute of Gender and Health at the University of Newcastle. There is evidence that women drivers who are involved in motor vehicle accidents are more likely than men to be injured. A possible reason is that women often drive smaller cars that provide less protection in a collision. One of the aims of the project was to examine preferences for cars among men and women and investigate the extent to which safety was a factor in determining preferences.

The survey was conducted by research assistants who asked people in car parks to participate and administered a structured questionnaire. They were instructed to obtain data from men and women with small, medium and large cars, with 50 people per group for a total of 300 respondents. (The sample size was based on power requirements for another part of the survey that involved anthropometric measurements.) The research assistants approached people in car parks of the University of Newcastle and nearby shopping centres during December 1997 and January 1998.

The data consist of 300 records each with 22 variables. The variables are:


	Variable		Description

	ID		Identification number of respondent
	Age		Age of respondent (years)
	Sex		1=female, 2=male
	LicYr		Time they have held a full driving licence, in years and months (years)
	LicMth		Time they have held a full driving licence, in years and months (months)
	ActCar		Make, model and year of car most often driven, coded to size of car 1=small, 2=medium, 3=large
	Kids5		Children under five, 1=yes, 2=no
	Kids6		Children 6 to 16, 1=yes, 2=no
	PrefCar		Preferred car, coded to size of car 1=small, 2=medium, 3=large
	Car15k		Preferred type of car if cost $15000, 1=small new car; 2=large second-hand car
	Reason		1=safety, 2=reliability, 3=cost, 4=performance, 5=comfort, 6=looks
	Cost		How important is cost when buying a car? 1=not important, 2=little importance, 3=important, 4=very important
	Reliable		How important is reliability ...?
	Perform		How important is performance ...?
	Fuel		How important is fuel consumption ...?
	Safety		How important is safety ...?
	AC/PS		How important is air conditioning/power steering ...?
	Park		How important is ease of parking ...?
	Room		How important is space/roominess ...?
	Doors		How important is the number of doors ...?
	Prestige		How important is prestige/style ...?
	Colour		How important is colour ...?

For further details, see the wording of the questionnaire.

Download

Data file (tab-delimited text)

Source

The data was contributed to OzDASL by Professor Annette Dobson, University of Queensland. Information on the data set was originally provided by Jenny Powers.