Telephone Surveys: Challenges for the Future

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Telephone Surveys Challenges for the Future

• Clyde Tucker
• Bureau of Labor Statistics

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What Has Led to the Challenges

• Technological Change
• Societal Change

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Technological Change

• Less clustering in 100-banks
• Declines in listing rates
• Expansion of the areacodes
• Multiple carriers
• Number portability
• Cell-only and cell-mostly households
• Possible drop in the coverage of residential
  landline numbers

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More on Technological Change

• VoIP and wireless broadband
• Single device for multiple types of
  communications
• The availability of a cheaper modethe Internet

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Consequences of Technological Change

• More complicated designs
• Dual frame sampling
• Use of multiple modes
• New contact procedures, interviewer training, and
  outcome codes
• More knowledgeable tech staff having a more
  central role
• New weighting methodology
• More reliance on cost-benefit analysis

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Societal Change

• The continued feasibility of telephone surveys
  depends much less on what communication devices
  we use to reach respondents than on the continued
  cooperation of these respondents

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More on Societal change

• Change in household composition
• Decline in married couples heading households
• Increase in households with unrelated individuals
• Increase in single-person households
• Growing linguistic and cultural diversity
• Growing concerns about privacy and
  confidentiality
• More two-earner households among married
  households
• Possible loss in sense of community (Bowling
  Alone?)
• Changing communication patterns in households
• Technology
• More eating away from home

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Consequences of Societal Change

• Increasing differences among subpopulations
  (interactions)
• Procedural change
• Management of phone surveys harder
• Use of multiple modes and possible mode effects
• Hiring of more diverse interviewers
• Changes in pattern of call scheduling
• Declining response rates (especially due to
  noncontact)
• Growing concerns about nonresponse bias

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Trends in Response Rates