Telephone Interviews

• Telephone interviews provide more anonymity than face to face interviews, and can be as anonymous as self-administered questionnaires.

• The personal contact allows for more complex survey design and more open ended questions.

• When using this method, you will usually have a copy of the questionnaire to read off and enter the responses into your codebook.

• Larger and even national samples can be used because of the convenience of not having to travel.

• The response rate is relatively good for telephone surveys.

• Contacting respondents who are unavailable is as simple as making another phone call.

• Surveys can be longer because the respondent cannot see how many questions are left.

• Many phone numbers are unlisted or have been changed, making it hard to find some people.

• Random digit dialing can be used to obtain a random sample, however it can be frustrating to dial business and disconnected numbers over and over.

• Using only the person who answers the phone for your data can introduce biases because of the people who tend to answer the phone.