Biking in Pittsburgh Survey | 36-303 Spring 2010 Group I | Assignment I.5 Research Question: How does the unique weather patterns present in Pittsburgh affect the area's bicycle riding adult (18+) residents? Our research question, "How do the unique weather patterns present in Pittsburgh affect the area's bicycle riding adult (18+) residents?" seeks to find out how the weather patterns in the Pittsburgh region adversely or otherwise affect the bicycle riding patterns of bicycle riders in Pittsburgh. This question is relevant because of the significant bicycle ridership within the city, increasingly high fuel prices and the affect of the multi-billion dollar bicycle industry in the United States.Also, bikes are "greener" and better for the environment even than public transportations, and as a city that wants to lead the nation in terms of clean energy and creating less of a carbon footprint, it would be useful to city policy makers to know how to maximize bikers riding thier bikes during all kinds of weather. We will utilize a "stratified random sampling" (proportionate allocation) method while conducting our survey. We decided to use this method because it allows us to reflect the diversity of the Pittsburgh region fairly accurately. A rough outline of our procedure is included below. We will obtain the sampling frame is by listing of all the prefixes in Pittsburgh (area code 412) from http://phones.whitepages.com/412. Then, in order to ensure that we get a representative sample in the sense that no one prefix is favored more heavily than it should be, we will use the same website's information on the number of telephone numbers that use that prefix. This allows us to weight the probability of selecting any individual prefix in proportion to the number of people that can be reached using that prefix. Then after a prefix has been selected, random-digit dialing can be used to determine the remaining numbers. Spreadsheet of prefixes is available upon request. Questionnaire: How old are you? What is your gender? Do you live within the Pittsburgh city limits? What area/neighborhood do you live in? What is your ethnicity? How much did your bike cost? What is your income? (Scales: <25) What sector of the economy do you work in? ___ Do you ride a bicycle? Do you mainly ride on the street, the sidewalk, or both? Do you find the weather in Pittsburgh to be conducive to cycling? Do you commute on your bicycle? Is your bike your main mode of transportation? Do you have a bus pass or ride the bus often? Do you have an automobile? What kinds of weather do you not ride your bike in? If so, do you commute in all four seasons of the year? Do you ride your bike less often in winter or any other season? If so, why? How far would you estimate that you ride your bike in a week? (in Miles) Why do you choose to ride your bike? On a scale of 1 to 7, how well kept would you say the roads/sidewalks are in Pittsburgh? Do you ride any of the bike trails available in the Pittsburgh area? If so, which ones?