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PATIENT Safety Technologies Inc., a struggling Los Angeles-based maker of patient safety products, is considering an unsolicited buyout offer for its potentially most profitable unit.

The holding company, which has faced repeated Amex delisting warnings, said last month it had received an offer from an unnamed party for an undisclosed amount for its SurgiCount Medical Inc. subsidiary. The unit makes a bar-code scanning device designed to keep track of surgical sponges and towels. It’s designed to reduce medical errors by reducing the chance that easily overlooked items are left in a patient’s body.
Patient Safety had announced in early October that it planned to spin off the unit, which has a growing number of customers around the country, and its board has agreed to evaluate the bid. It plans to hire an outside, unaffiliated investment banking firm to advise it.

The company, formerly known as Franklin Capital Corp., has undergone a tumultuous series of , changes in business strategy and management since Milton “Todd” Ault III, who runs a Los Angeles private investment company, gained a significant stake in the company in early 2004.
Patient Safety had announced in early October that it planned to spin off the unit, which has a growing number of customers around the country, and its board has agreed to evaluate the bid. It plans to hire an outside, unaffiliated investment banking firm to advise it.

The company, formerly known as Franklin Capital Corp., has undergone a tumultuous series of , changes in business strategy and management since Milton “Todd” Ault III, who runs a Los Angeles private investment company, gained a significant stake in the company in early 2004.

LOG A LITTLE COUCH TIME WITH Animal Planet, and you will observe that many of nature’s superlative hunters opt to seek prey in packs rather than go it alone. Though sales may be a career direction for many a lone wolf, there’s much evidence to prove that selling en masse, or team selling, may have great benefits for the salesperson, team and company overall. The method comes to life when a cross-functional group is created to service the diverse needs of prospects and clients. Team composition may be as simple as a sales rep and a support person. Or representatives from sales, customer service, IT, finance, operations and management may all have roles. This all hands-on-deck approach helps elucidate who’s responsible for what and gives clients a soothing sense that all the niggling details have a home.
Companies using team selling reap rewards when several disciplines work collaboratively toward fulfilling common goals: closing the sale, keeping the client, or winning the client back. Ancillary benefits of the approach include a shorter selling cycle, a happier customer, and unity within the company. Accord-cording to Jill Griffin, author of Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It (Jossey-Bass), team selling “helps establish multiple relationships and contacts between the account and vendor.” Because so many people are nurturing the account, there are fewer chances for the relationship to turn sour.
For customer comfort, name one person, likely the salesperson or in-house account manager, as the primary contact. Schedule weekly meetings to get issues addressed. In building and maintaining a team, look out for the dreaded management-by-committee curse. To avoid creating more layers, policies and red tape (an aggravation for employees and customers), make sure team roles and hierarchy are well defined. Steve Waterhouse, president of The Waterhouse Group, a sales consulting firm in Scarborough, Maine, agrees preparation is a must, cautioning that “when a group of people first gathers, you have a gang, not a team.”

To encourage players to see the upside of a partnership-driven team, set up a compensation plan that rewards all participants for a successful implementation or landed sale. You can achieve this by creating both individual and team goals–stars are rewarded for their efforts, and they win again when the team thrives.

Larry Chonko, Holloway professor of marketing at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, offers several ways a cross-functional team can be a boon to entrepreneurs:

* ENHANCES ORGANIZATIONAL INTEGRATION: Members with different backgrounds talk to each other about what they do, how and why they do it, and how it can provide value to the customer.

* SPANS ORGANIZATIONAL BOUNDARIES: Each team member retains his or her expertise but develops a functional literacy in other areas.

* PROVIDES BETTER CUSTOMER VALUE: Sales teams allow for pooled intelligence.

* KEEPS REPS AGILE: The expertise of a selling team allows salespeople to thrive in a continuously changing, unpredictable business environment.

Peter Whitsett, Kmart’s co-chief merchant, has ridden with Kmart down some rough roads. Now, he is helping establish the merchandising direction of a chain that may be on the verge of revitalization.

Of course, much of the attention lavished on Kmart recently has regarded its coupling with Sears, but a lot more is happening. Kmart has established a new prototype to deal with both selling and operational issues. It continues to recover from its stay in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and it faces consumer and vendor uncertainly about its future.
Whitsett shares chief merchant responsibilities with softlines/electronics executive John Goodman. Both men report to ceo Alwyn Lewis. Whitsett also holds the titles vp and gmm for food, drug, pharmacy and hardlines. In six years with Kmart, Whitsett has seen how things work from a number of perspectives. “At Kmart, I have had a number of different positions. I came in through the inventory-management side in both drug store and food. I spent a few years down in Dallas, came back [to the Troy, Mich., headquarters] as the senior vp of merchandising for food, and have picked up drug store hardlines and pharmacy.”

While in Dallas, he worked closely with Fleming during its ill-fated tenure as Kmart’s food supplier. While those days had their tougher side, the experience certainly tempered Whitsett and gave him an opportunity to fully understand Kmart’s distribution issues regarding food and consumables. Indeed, Whitsett sums up his resume in terms of attributes that combine a service orientation with a deliberate view of how to pursue expansion.
“What I bring to my position is a strong operational background, a keen focus on the customer and a very disciplined approach to how we grow our business,” Whitsett said.

In combining major food categories with traditional hard goods, Kmart has adopted a structure used by other discounters as they have accommodated edibles operations.

Whitsett said, “Reporting to me, I have six divisional vice presidents: for pharmacy/drug store; food and consumables; toys and sporting goods; lawn and garden, auto and hardware; and one for seasonal.”

Whitsett faces significant challenges in his position. An oft-amended merchandising strategy at Kmart has affected some departments more than others, and many of the most knocked-about operations are the ones Whitsett finds himself heading. Some, such as automotive and hardware, not only have experienced upheavals but may face still another shake up as the merger of Kmart and Sears evolves. Yet it is food that has seen more ups and downs at Kmart than any other department. Food was a centerpiece of Kmart’s traffic-building strategy until the Chapter 11 period when Kmart sold off supercenters and urban discount stores where pantries were thought to be a particular draw.

Now, Whitsett is charged with pursuing a new strategy that requires detailed attention to the categories he supervises. In its new prototype units, Kmart is carrying less inventory and focusing on high-volume profitable items. To satisfy key customers, it is using data to adjust assortment on a store and cluster level. Thus management has become an even more critical issue for Kmart.

“We have stores with varying degrees of volume, and certainly, based on their location, very different demographics around the store both in urban markets and rural markets,” Whitsett said. “That is certainly a key strategic merchandising point that John [Goodman] and I are addressing to really make sure we are bringing in an assortment that is appropriate for that neighborhood, for the customers that we serve.”

Part of Whitsett’s job will involve convincing skeptical observers of Kmart’s viability. Many who speculate on Kmart’s fate are anticipating a radically altered retailer. For example, Margaret Cannella of J.P. Morgan Securities speculated in a research note that Sears eventually would get the bulk of Kmart’s best brands. “Any remaining Kmart stores may be run as ‘value’ retailers, like Value City or Odd Lot,” she asserted.

LAS VEGAS — This city may have been abuzz with the Consumer Electronics Show early this month, but among attendees the buzz was strong about Tweeter Home Entertainment’s newest prototype unveiled there: Tweeter Entertainment Architects.

Announced in November, the store intends to create an entirely new way of showcasing and selling the latest in CE products. “The Las Vegas store represents the future of the Tweeter brand,” said Jeff Stone, president and ceo. “This store offers buyers a new way to shop and provides an entirely new array of solutions and services.”
Indeed, a tour of the store prior to its Jan. 17 grand opening reveals an environment unlike any other in specialty retailing. A concierge greets customers upon entering, and fully one-half of the location is devoted to showing customers how new technology can work within their homes, courtesy of room-like vignettes incorporated into the store.

A living room, family room, kitchen, bedroom and even a home sports bar feature the latest in products, systems and services. Microsoft and HP provide much of the backbone here, with the Windows XP Media Center and PCs in each vignette showcasing how consumers can operate multiple devices and home systems from any display in the home, all with a single control device. Turn on the TV in the bedroom and a flat screen rises from the foot of the bed while lights dim for optimal viewing. Access the front door security system without leaving the rec room or check the weather from an HDTV embedded in the bathroom mirror.
While the store has no traditional merchandise displays or departments outside a small selection of digital imaging products and portable devices, it does offer some of the chain’s more traditional setups such as the mobile audio listening rooms and home theater, where customers can sit back in easy chairs and watch movie clips linked to sensors that provide real-world special effects such as vibrations and motion.

The store provides a truly new way to showcase not just emerging technology but technology that actually exists today. The concept of home connectivity, seamless integration and all its possible combinations with products is a nebulous one. Both retailers and vendors have been struggling to develop ways to showcase it all as well as sell it to consumers in a retail environment. Tweeter Entertainment Architects is an attempt to solve this puzzle by creating a new retail model for a changing industry.

You drive across Alberta, seeing nothing but cattle and sky, and suddenly Calgary rises from the plains, a cluster of glass skyscrapers bordered by the Bow and Elbow Rivers. A friendly, white-collar city symbolized by a white cowboy hat, Calgary has evolved from an 1875 fort into a thriving business and cultural center.

It is a city with a dual personality. There is Calgary during July’s stampede–the Wild West Show started by American trick-roper Guy Weadick–when motel prices triple, pancake breakfasts abound, everyone from desk clerks to bank tellers sport cowboy hats, and rodeo cowboys from around the world compete. The rest of the year, Calgary is businesslike, elegant and international with its banks and oil companies, grand Fairmont Palliser hotel, and its neighborhoods that bear the stamp of their Asian and European residents.

A favorable exchange rate and good air connections–the city is served by Air Canada, United, Delta, and Alaska Airlines–make Calgary an appealing place to visit for a summer weekend, or longer. And it’s an easy place to navigate; the city is laid out in a grid. Major expressways are known as “Trails,” avenues run east to west, and streets run north to south. The Calgary Transit C Train along Seventh Avenue is free downtown. Prices listed are in U.S. dollars; check

DUBLIN, Ireland — Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42747) has announced the addition of UK Travel Insurance 2006 to their offering.

A comprehensive analysis of the UK travel insurance market

Scope of this title:

* Analysis of the competitive issues shaping the market, supported by interviews with senior industry executives and data from secondary sources

* Exclusive market sizing, travel trend, competitor and distribution statistics

* Forecasts of growth up to and including 2010 and the key factors behind this growth

* Interviews with industry executives conducted suggest that the split between annual and single trip travel insurance varies widely between competitors books. However, on average the split is 60:40 in favor of single trip travel.

* Following a Government review in 2007, travel agents could become included under FSA regulation. If this does take place, it is likely that some travel agents will leave the market, in particular, creating opportunities for the alternative distribution channels.

* While European destinations are still the most commonly visited, the number of trips taken to more exotic destinations is growing the fastest. For example, the number of trips taken to Africa grew the fastest in 2005, driven by holidays to Egypt.

Reasons to order your copy:

* Develop your business strategy with confidence using our exclusive sector forecasts of market size

* Understand the current market structure including market size, growth and competitor markets shares to see the potential in this market

* Incorporate the analysis of travel destination data into your marketing strategy

When she immigrated to the United States from the Caribbean island of Anguilla in the 1980s, Jerone Buchanan was determined to gain financial independence. She pursued a career as a nurse and eventually elevated herself to assistant director of nursing at HHC Health & Home Care in New York City, where she earns slightly less than $100,000 a year. With that type of income, financial independence was attainable for the Harlem resident, but she needed a plan. Buchanan’s first portfolio was with Merrill Lynch, but when its performance didn’t match her expectations, she looked elsewhere. A fellow member of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women referred her to Patricia Kerr, a Mount Vernon, New York-based adviser with American Express who helped Buchanan chart a different course.

“Initially my main goals were to establish a six-month cash reserve, plan for retirement, save for a house, and keep debt to a minimum,” Buchanan recalls. After a complete financial review, she says Kerr “advised me to be conservative al first and then change my strategy as the market improved.”

Kerr’s approach with Buchanan was simple: “When we first met, she had experienced some portfolio erosion, so my goal was to build her portfolio gradually and use an asset allocation model to suit her moderately aggressive style.” Buchanan’s portfolio was divided into 40% large-caps, 15% mid-caps and small-caps, 15% international, 10% real estate, 10% cash, and 10% bonds. Some of the investments included Fidelity Growth & Income (FGRIX), which yielded a return of 6.6%; Goldman Sachs Mid Cap Value (GCMAX), which generated a 22.59% return; and Franklin Real Estate Securities (FREEX), which returned 12.62%.

Overall, Buchanan’s portfolio has shown a 12.34% average return despite a downturn in the market. Earning those types of returns has her on track to meet her goal of retiring in 10 years at age 55. She has been careful to control her debt and contributes $900 monthly to her 403(b) plan as well as the maximum $3,000 a year to a Roth IRA. Under Kerr’s guidance, Buchanan’s initial investment of $75,153 has grown to $107,000 without her having to make any significant economic adjustments. “My lifestyle is unchanged,” says Buchanan. “I love to travel to places such as Africa and the Caribbean, and I continue to do so.”

What’s left to do now is shop for the house she wants and address some estate planning matters. “We’ve talked about her getting a durable power of attorney, a healthcare proxy, and a living will. And by the time she’s 50, [we’ll have made] provisions for long-term care,” projects Kerr. Buchanan says she’ll heed Kerr’s advice, adding: “It’s important for black women to put money aside for retirement so that they can maintain their lifestyle as they get older.”

NO LONGER SHUNNED BY THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY, SOUTH AFRICA IS A NATION RICH WITH WINEMAKING HISTORY. ITS POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND VITICULTURAL CHANGES MEAN EXCELLENT AND UNUSUAL WINES FOR THE SAVVY BUYER LOOKING TO EXPAND A LIST OR PERSONAL COLLECTION.

Let’s try a little exercise. What do you think of when someone says Australia? Maybe it’s a movie star like Nicole Kidman, gigantic barbecued “yabbies” and killer surfing on Bondi Beach. Perhaps you think of laid-back attitudes, whimsical feature films or a can of beer so masculine as to inspire its own dialect of English. Maybe you envision vegemite, the Olympic Games, the Bloomin’ Onion[R] from Outback Steak House or the graceful architecture of the Sydney Opera House. Wine makers in Australia are banking on the fact that, for the last 20 years or so, American consumers have been bombarded with positive images and ideas about what Australia has to offer. (Okay, never mind about the Onion[R]). American and European consumers may not know much about the soil, climate or grape varieties in the land down under, but if they’re familiar with the idea of Australia, they’ll be far more likely to pick up a bottle of Australian wine.

Let’s try the same exercise, only this time I’ll say South Africa. Now what comes to mind? Racial segregation, apartheid, Nelson Mandela in a jail cell, shantytowns–not exactly the upbeat images that invite a consumer to try a country’s products. South Africa has been a wine-producing country for nearly 350 years, but in the current marketplace, South African wines are still struggling to overcome the dark political legacy of much of the 20th century, not to mention the trade sanctions that kept them largely isolated from the international export market. The good news, however, is that acceptance and demand for SA wines are on the rise because, at the end of the day, they offer great value, continental-style sophistication and the chance to experience unusual grapes and blends.

SOUTH AFRICAN WINE IN PERSPECTIVE

Dutch settlers arrived on the southern tip of the African continent in 1652; soon after, they successfully transplanted European vines to African soil, and in 1659, the first wine made with Cape-grown grapes was produced. Some thirty years later, French Huguenot refugees settled in the area and began to make their own imprint on South African wine culture. Simon van der Stel, the second Dutch governor to rule the Cape, planted the first Constantia vineyard. While the resultant dessert wine enjoyed a fine reputation in Europe throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, thanks to the marketing and distribution efforts of the Dutch East India Company, not all Cape wines fared so well at first. The European and Far East markets did not take to the new import from South Africa, especially since the quality of the product often suffered from a lack of proper aging vessels. With time, though, nascent winemakers grew more skilled at working with local conditions, and the British occupation of the Cape created a large demand for the area’s wines. In addition, when the British entered into a war with France, they began to buy greater quantities of wine from South Africa; unfortunately, once the two European nations resolved their differences, in 1861, the export market for Cape wines virtually collapsed. Some twenty years later, the industry took a further beating when a devastating phylloxera infestation began to sweep through the Constantia Valley.

In the wake of a tough century for South African winemaking that ended with a period of massive overproduction and its attendant hardships, Charles Kohler created the Ko-operatieve Wijnbouwers Vereniging van Zuid-Afrika Beperkt (KWV) in order to stabilize the industry and end overproduction. The KWV, with the express backing of the government, controlled prices and production levels, and severely restricted the planting of new vines in areas that showed promise. It cleaned up an industry that had fallen into chaos, but some feel that the level of control it exerted was partially responsible for holding South African wines back from their full potential for much of the 20th century. The other part of the equation was, of course, the advent of apartheid, or government-mandated, race-based segregation, in 1948. Because of the repressive regime, South Africa found itself increasingly isolated in the world: several nations enacted economic sanctions, and decreasing amounts of wine entered or left the nation.

Says Andre Shearer, chief executive of wine importing company Cape Classics, “The ‘old’ industry in the South African context represented oppressive control, poor market awareness due to the sanctions, grape-grower dominance, an emphasis on quantity production and payment for tonnage instead of quality production and payment for quality … expression of terroir was a completely foreign concept.” Rory Callahan of Wine and Food Associates agrees, saying, “A lot of the grapes being grown were going to brandy production. There was no incentive to produce high-quality product.”

The copper mines in the Okiep district of Namaqualand are steeped in the history of South African mining and geology. The most famous mineral specimen-producing copper mine in the district was the Jan Coetzee mine, where several thousand quartz specimens were collected in 1966. Excellent specimens of chalcopyrite, fluorite, calcite, gypsum and chalcocite have been collected from other mines in the district such as Nababeep West and Okiep.

Dutch colonialists discovered the Okiep deposits in 1685, although the indigenous Africans may have previously worked copper there for several hundred years. The first mine to be opened by Europeans in South Africa is located in the Okiep district, and the first South African mining company was formed there in 1852 to mine copper from the deposits. Other notable “firsts” for the region include the first South African geological report and the first geological map produced in this country, both of which describe and depict the Namaqualand copper fields.

Fluctuating copper prices, coupled with a remote and hostile setting, have resulted in varying degrees of success and failure in the 150-year (”modern”) history of the mines. Derelict and abandoned mining apparatus, some imported from Cornwall, can still be seen scattered around at a few of the old mines.

The Okiep copper district covers an area of approximately 3000 km^sup 2^ in the Northern Cape Province and includes the towns of Springbok, Nababeep, Okiep, Concordia and Carolusberg. The geographic region is referred to as Namaqualand.

The greater part of the copper district consists of a highly dissected mountainous terrain that flattens eastward, merging with the Bushmanland plain. The average elevation is 900 meters above sea level, rising in places to about 1300 meters. The area has an average annual rainfall of only 17.5 cm.

HISTORY

Copper! It is a malleable, enduring metal that has served man for untold centuries. Certainly it has served Namaqualand well. More than anything else it has made Namaqualand what it is, and to mention the one without the other is to censor history. (Steenkamp, 1975, p. 37)

PRE-EUROPEAN COPPER MINING

Copper was mined for centuries in southern Africa, the most noteworthy localities being in Zimbabwe, eastern Botswana and the northeastern parts of South Africa (Miller, 1995). Two localities, at Palabora and Messina, were later discovered by Europeans and developed into significant copper mines. Radiocarbon testing of charcoal samples from the former site date it back to 770 AD, making it the oldest known site for pre-European mining anywhere in southern Africa (Mason, 1982).

There is, therefore, well-documented evidence for pre-European copper mining in some parts of southern Africa, but the Namaqualand region is somewhat problematical. The local Namaqua people were wearing copper bands on their arms and ankles when they first met the Dutch explorers in the 1660’s, and it was this fact that prompted the first expeditions to find the “copper mountain.” Even earlier, when the Portuguese explorer Bartholomew Diaz landed on the western shores of the southern African continent on route to the East Indies, he too encountered Africans wearing copper ornaments. The copper may have been traded from other regions, perhaps from Namibia to the north or from the Transvaal and eastern Botswana-no unequivocal archaeological evidence has been found in Namaqualand to prove that the copper worn by the locals was in fact mined there. The Dutch explorers found oxidized copper ore well-exposed on the surface in several places, so the lack of proven African mining in this region is somewhat perplexing (Miller, 1995). Moreover, despite the absence of archaeological evidence, other historical documents clearly show “Hottentots” working and smelting iron (Kolbe, 1727) and possibly copper as well.

EUROPEAN EXPLORATION AND DEVELOPMENT

17th Century

The Okiep copper district’s history is almost as old as European colonization in South Africa; its beginning postdates Jan van Riebeck’s landing and occupation of the Cape in 1652 by only a few years. The first European exploration parties that were sent forth into the interior of Namaqualand started out from the Cape of Good Hope, dispatched to find the “legendary” golden wealth of King Monomotapa (Dapper, 1676; Steenkamp, 1975). In 1660, van Riebeck sent the first exploratory team into the interior of northwestern South Africa. Between 1660 and 1664, a total of six expeditions were undertaken, although none found either the gold or copper; these discoveries were to come later. Nonetheless, these early travelers did return to the Cape settlement with geographic information that was to be an invaluable aid to later investigators. They also amassed valuable data on the flora and fauna of the region.

The last of these early expeditions was led by Sergeant Jonas de la Guerre, who, with a party of 14 men, set out from the Dutch fort on October 11, 1663. His directive was still to seek out the Monomotapa kingdom, a challenge he was not to fulfill. Unlike the parties before him, Guerre did not even reach the Orange River. Yet he ventured close to the outcrop of copper deposits that were later located in the northern region of the Kamiesberg.

The Seventh International Conference on Travel Survey Methods was held at the Los Suenos Marriott hotel, Playa Herradura in Costa Rica from August 1 to 6,2004. In common with previous conferences in this series, this was a working conference. The conference was organised by the International Steering Committee for Travel Survey Conferences, jointly chaired by Dr. Cheryl Stecher (USA) and Professor Peter Stopher (Australia). Local arrangements were handled by a Local Organising Committee, jointly chaired by Carlos Arce (USA) and Carlos Contreras (Costa Rica). About 80 delegates attended, representing 19 countries from North, Central, and South America, Europe, Africa, Australasia, and the Middle East.

Conference participants were assigned to two workshops, one of which met in the first part of the conference and the other in the second part. There were eight workshops in the first half of the conference and seven in the second half. Each workshop was given a specific topic and a charge. Resource papers were commissioned for each workshop, and these resource papers formed the foundation of the deliberations of the workshop. In addition, 21 papers, written in response to a call for papers, were presented in workshops during the conference.

The conference commenced on Sunday evening with a welcome reception, and opening remarks from the Costa Rican Ministry of Transport and Public Works. On Monday morning, a plenary session was held with three keynote papers. The first of these summarised the state of Travel Surveys in Latin America, and was presented by Juan de Dios Ortuzar. This was followed by a paper on Travel Surveys in Europe, presented by Henk van Evert, after which a paper on standards for household travel surveys was presented by Peter Stopher. Following this opening plenary session, a second plenary session was held in which participants heard from eight commissioned paper authors, each of whom had been commissioned to write a resource paper for a specific workshop. The workshops and their resource paper authors and chairs for the first half of the conference were as follows:

Workshop A1: Survey Design

Chair: David Kurth (USA)

Resource Paper Authors: Henk van Evert (Netherlands), Werner Brög (Germany), Erhard ErI (Germany)

Travel survey designs vary considerably around the world. While the United States gravitated toward telephone interviews in the 1970s, home interviews have remained popular elsewhere, and are, in certain countries, the dominant mode of travel survey. Telephone surveys are beleaguered by low response rates, caller ID, telephone answering machines, and ‘no call’ lists. At the same time, home interviews have become increasingly expensive in most countries and the issue of security remains a deterrent to their use. The time appears ripe, therefore, to review survey designs as used around the world and in the light of current trends, good practice, and new technology, identify survey procedures that promise to improve current practice. Within each mode attention should be given to effective means of recruitment, motivation of respondents, effective communication among participants, efficient data acquisition, and establishing means of quality control and error correction wherever possible.

Workshop A2: Sample Design

Chair: Rosella Picardo (USA)

Resource Paper Author: Mira Paskota (Serbia)

Sample design requires information on the variance in the data, levels of error in the data that would be acceptable to the user, and the certainty the user needs to know whether errors in the data are within the acceptable limits or not. Variance within the data is not known in advance of the survey and, therefore, one area of discussion is whether establishment of typical (or default) variances of data items would be worthwhile and useful. Another issue is what variables should be considered in establishing sample size and how should the sample sizes needed for each variable be combined to establish a common sample size. Acceptable error limits on individual variable have typically been established subjectively and yet this has been done without knowing how input errors propagate through the travel demand modelling process to model outputs. Are errors in input variables that are typically considered acceptable (say, d”10%) producing output errors that are within acceptable limits? Is there a need for sensitivity analysis to study this effect? Lastly, is there a need for a standardised procedure for establishing sample sizes in travel surveys?

Workshop A3: Instrument Design

Chair: Tom Cohen (UK)

Resource Paper Author: Johanna Zmud (USA)

Since survey instruments, and the manner in which they are used, may vary from one part of the world to the other, aspects of instrument design that are significant may vary. Issues that formed the subject of discussion included guidelines on good practice in the design of a self-administered questionnaire (e.g. layout, font, colour, etc.) or the structure and content of a telephone-administered survey, the desirability of identifying a core set of questions to be included in all travel surveys, the value of establishing standard wording for some questions, standardization of categories on items such as education level, job classification, or income, and whether there is a desirable ordering of questions in a survey. These issues need to be discussed in the context of different international settings.