Iowa Seat Belt Use Survey 2014 Data Collection Methodology Report, September 25, 2014

In an effort to achieve greater consistency and comparability in state-wide seat belt use reporting, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued new requirements in 2011 for observing and reporting future seat belt use. The requirements included the involvement of a qualified statistician in the sampling and weighting portions of the process as well as a variety of operational details. The Iowa Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau contracted with Iowa State University’s Survey & Behavioral Research Services (SBRS) in 2011 to develop the study design and data collection plan for the State of Iowa annual survey that would meet the new requirements of the NHTSA. A seat belt survey plan for Iowa was developed by SBRS with statistical expertise provided by Zhengyuan Zhu, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Statistics at Iowa State University and was approved by NHTSA on March 19, 2012.