How to Conduct Telephone Surveys

"The writing style is good, clear, and accurate, with a logical presentation of material. The checklists are effective learning aids."
--Carol J. Lancaster, Medical University of South Carolina

When should you use a telephone survey, and how do you transform completed telephone interviews into an analyzable, machine-readable data file? This book shows readers how to develop and administer telephone surveys (with particular attention to paper-and-pencil administration) and prepare the results for analysis. Using detailed examples and checklists, the authors explain the different kinds of telephone surveys, how to determine which telephone data collection method to use, and how to design and administer the questionnaires. Information is included for adapting questions originally designed for use in self-administered questionnaires or other data collection modalities. Language issues are discussed, including literacy and language level usage, and basic steps for translating survey materials into other languages.

The authors also offer tips for:

• Interacting with and motivating respondents
• Handling "call backs" and "refusal conversions"
• Selecting, training, and supervising interviewers
• Sampling, with particular attention to random digit dialing (RDD) procedures
• Calculating response rates

Linda Bourque, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences and an associate director of both the Center for Public Health and Disasters and the Southern California Injury Prevention Research Center in the UCLA School of Public Health. Trained as a sociologist, she teaches courses on research design with an emphasis on the design, data processing, and data analysis of questionnaires and community-based surveys. Her research during the last twenty years has focused on community response to disasters. A public website contains all of the raw data, codebooks, questionnaires, publications and related material from surveys conducted on California earthquakes since 1971 by Leo Reeder, Ralph Turner, Dennis Mileti and Linda Bourque. Current research includes the National Survey of Disaster Experiences and Preparedness (NSDEP), and the California Survey of Earthquake Preparedness. Funded by the Department of Homeland Security and the National Science Foundation, NSDEP examines the factors that predict disaster preparedness and risk avoidant behavior, with an emphasis on terrorism. A stratified sample of 3,300 households was selected using random digit dialing: 1,000 households were selected for interview in areas considered at high risk of terrorism (Washington, D.C., New York City, Los Angeles County), and 2,300 households were selected for interview throughout the rest of the continental United States. Respondents were asked whether they had invested in six preparedness behaviors and seven risk avoidant behaviors either because of terrorism, natural disasters, other reasons, or any combination of the three. NSDEP reports and other documentation are available here. Eve Picardy Fielder died on Oct. 27 at home in Venice, CA, after a long illness. She was 67. An academic researcher, she received her doctorate in public health from UCLA, where she was the director of the Survey Research Center. Many of the hundreds of survey research projects she managed focused on public policies related to social issues and service delivery in the areas of health and welfare. She also conducted research of her own on issues of relevance to the Hispanic/Latino communities