Survey about road traffic and dwelling situation

What is this survey about?

This survey is about the effects of road traffic on the dwelling situation and quality of living at your place of residence. As part of this study, residents who live along street sections where traffic calming measures could be implemented in the near future are surveyed throughout Switzerland. Such measures are also planned in your community. The study is an important basis for the federal government and the cantons for the planning, implementation and evaluation of such measures. The survey is designed as a longitudinal study with three relatively short online questionnaires, to which we would like to invite you at intervals of about one year each.

Who conducts this survey and how is it funded?

The survey is being conducted by a project team from the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), Empa, and ETH Zurich. It is financed by the FOEN.

Where did the project team get the addresses from?

The address to which we sent the invitation letter was provided to us by the official residents' registration office of your municipality for use in this study, in compliance with all data protection regulations. We will delete the address from our files as soon as we no longer need it.

Why is the survey not anonymous? Why the personal cover letter?

In this study, we would like to survey residents who live along specific street sections in selected municipalities in Switzerland. In order to obtain meaningful results, we need to exactly know the local conditions of your dwelling situation, e.g. with regard to the intensity of road traffic noise or the amount of traffic and the speeds driven. For this reason, we have written to you personally at the address registered with the municipalities' registration office.

What happens to the data collected in the online questionnaire?

Your answers will be stored digitally and used exclusively for research purposes. The project team will carry out the scientific analysis of the responses and publish them in anonymous form in reports and articles. All publications in this project will not allow any conclusions to be drawn about individual persons and their home addresses. Your answers will therefore remain anonymous.

The data collected in the survey will be stored in a data archive in completely anonymized form after the end of the study so that they can be used further at a later date in the interest of science, e.g. in the form of so-called meta-analyses. Anonymized means that instead of the name and address only a number is used to identify your answers. Individual identification is thus impossible.

Are name and address data passed on to third parties?

No, absolutely not. Your contact info (name and address) remain stored exclusively on well-secured servers at ETH Zurich, seperately from the answers, and only as long as necessary for the project. E.g. in order to be able to contact you again after about one year after the initial survey, if you give your consent to this (in the questionnaire).

Is it possible to withdraw from the survey?

Yes, participation in the survey is and remains voluntary. You can stop completing the questionnaire at any time and without giving any reason. If you wish to have your data deleted, please notify the study coordination office by e-mail at or by telephone at +41 44 505 15 51. Your name and address and any surveys you may have completed up to that point will then be irretrievably deleted from our system.

How is information about the study results provided?

If you would like to be informed about the study results, we ask you to be patient, because the study is planned to run for several years. After completion of the study, in about 5 years, the results will be published and posted on the website.

Who can be contacted for further questions?

For further questions, please contact the study coordination office by e-mail at or by phone at +41 44 505 15 51.