From the Chicago Dispatcher
June 2009

By George Lutfallah

Bias of the Data Collectors

According to the report, “survey recipients were approached and interviewed in person by AFSC employees...” The study also said, “all responses were recorded anonymously thereby protecting the respondent from first-person pressure to answer as he or she believed was expected.”

When I first learned of this study it was from a poster at O'Hare which stated that you were going to study the “declining” income of cabdrivers. Dr. Bruno, I don't know if you wrote that language or if that came from the AFSC, but there is no doubt that the AFSC came in with an agenda to prove that Chicago cabdrivers are poor. With framing like that, drivers were already aware that the purpose of the study was to prove their economic plight. Do you think this could have had an impact on the responses given? Thus having the AFSC collect the data casts doubt on the objectivity of the data. I'm sure that a lot of drivers had questions about the survey and how to answer it. Did none of the data collectors assist the drivers in responding? What instructions were the AFSC employees given as to how they were to answer any questions and what controls did you put in place to ensure these instructions were followed?

I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not Dr. Bruno but in the Spring of 2008 there was a report put out by the International Taxi Workers Alliance (ITWA) which reported that weekly lease Chicago taxi drivers earn $175 per day, which according to their report is $10.94 per hour. This figure was calculated by the ITWA using a 16 hour work day. You should also be aware that the Chicago data was provided by Prateek Sampat of the AFSC on February 2, 2008. Your study concluded an average shift of 13.26 hours with an hourly income of $4.81 for weekly lease drivers. I'm not sure how Mr. Sampat derived his figures. Perhaps the discrepancy can be partially explained by your report which indicated that, “Drivers revealed that the more inclement weather conditions caused more people to take taxis thereby increasing total fares.”

Perhaps this demonstrates what was set out to be proven in the first place - that cabdriver incomes are declining.