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Title Cell Phones and Public-Sector Survey Research; Are Incentive and/or Compensation Offers Really Needed?
Year 2007
Access date 29.05.2007
Abstract

Background: Nearly 10% of U.S. households are now cell-phone-only, and this number continues to grow. The demographics of households with one or more cell phones and no landline are more likely to be younger, rent their home, and live alone or with unrelated roommates. There is growing concern that this undercoverage by landline-based random digit dial (RDD) survey research is threatening the generalizability of these studies. One solution that may address this household undercoverage is to add cell phone. Objective: We hypothesize that response rates among cell phone users will not be significantly impacted by the offer of compensation. Methods: Beginning in October 2006, ORC Macro began calling cell phone exchanges at random within six states—MA, NJ, CT, MT, FL, and TX—and administered a shortened BRFSS or ATS (Adult Tobacco Survey) survey instrument with reduced calling attempts, and more liberal refusal protocols, and in one of the states, compensation of $15 WQS offered to all contacts (survey participation was not a requirement). No incentive was offered in the remaining states. Results: We will compare response rates and other relevant dispositions among cell users who were offered an incentive, cell users who were not offered an incentive, and the corresponding state landline BRFSS data collected over a similar period. Conclusions: We anticipate that there will not be statistically significant differences in response rates between cell users who were offered an incentive and cell users who were not offered an incentive.

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Year of publication2007
Bibliographic typeConferences, workshops, tutorials, presentations
Full text availabilityAvailable on request
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