Numeracy & Quantitative Methods

Laura Lake

• Interviews can be conducted by telephone rather than face-to-face.

• Structured interviewing: face-to-face or telephone?

• Both are valid methods of collecting survey data from respondents with their own distinct advantages and disadvantages.

Telephone Telephone InterviewingInterviewing

•Resources: cost and time in comparison to face-to-face interviewing

•Particularly with geographically dispersed respondents / accessing geographically remote respondents.

• Potential to avoid the need for cluster sampling (often needed with field interviewing to control interviewer field costs).

• Administration: interviewing from a central telephone unit potentially lends itself to careful supervision and control

•Potentially implications for standarisation and reliability.

Advantages: Advantages: Resources & Resources & AdministrationAdministration

• Interviewer effect: telephone interviewing can mitigating against:

• Interviewer characteristics

• Social desirability bias – tendency to answer questions in a way that is believed to be socially acceptable and desirable.

Advantages: Advantages: Impact of Impact of InterviewersInterviewers

•Access: meeting the needs of the sample of people responding to the survey

• appropriateness for people with hearing difficulties

• accessing those without telephones, ex-directory or mobile only households

• no complete list of domestic telephone numbers

• implications for sampling

• sampling from public directories potentially weighted.

Disadvantages: Disadvantages: Access & Access & CompletionCompletion

•Survey Topics & Anonymity

• When exploring particularly sensitive topics the face-to-face method may be a superior method. Telephone surveys are neither anonymous (as with self-completion) nor are they personal in the sense of a face-to-face interview.

• So, better or worse than with face-to-face? Depends on the topic but the some degree of anonymity means potentially good with sensitive topics.

• How to know? Explore with a pilot.

Disadvantages: Disadvantages: Without Face-to-Without Face-to-Face InterviewersFace Interviewers

• Visual Cues

• Interviewers cannot work with ‘observed’ or visual cues from respondents.

Disadvantages: Disadvantages: Without Face-to-Without Face-to-Face InterviewersFace Interviewers

• Question types/ formats

• Careful consideration needs to be given to the question type and suitability for telephone interviewing.

• Ranking, matrix or multiple response are difficult to administer over the telephone.

Disadvantages: Disadvantages: FormatFormat

• Questionnaire length

•Lengthy telephone interviews questionnaire generally not recommended.

• Face-to-face can give more options with time scales.

• Quality of data

• Potentially not as good as with face-to-face interviewing.

Disadvantages: Disadvantages: FormatFormat

• Response rates can be low when approached by “cold” telephone calling

• Non-contacts and refusals

Disadvantages: Disadvantages: Response RateResponse Rate

Bryman, A. (2008) Social Research Methods. 3rd Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

David, M. and Sutton, C. (2004) Social Research :The Basics. London: Sage.

ESRC Survey Measurement Programme. Online: available from Survey Resource Network http://www.surveynet.ac.uk/

Oppenheim, A. (2000) Questionnaire Design, Interviewing and Attitude Measurement. London: Continuum

ReferencesReferences

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reproductions must comply with the terms of that license.Author Laura Lake

Institute University of Plymouth

TitleNumeracy & Quantitative MethodsManagement & Data Collection: Structured Interview – telephone

DescriptionKey issues in developing structured interviewing for surveys using telephone survey administration methods.

Date Created March 2011.

Educational Level Level 5

Keywords

UKOER LFWOERK UOPCPDRM Learning from Woerk WBL Work Based Learning CPD Continuous Professional Development Telephone interviewing, face-to-face interviewing, social desirability bias, visual cues,

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