Optimizing Call Scheduling in an RDD Survey

• Activity Number: 41
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 8, 2004 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Whitney E. Murphy*+ and Colm O'Muircheartaigh and Cynthia Howes
• Companies: NORC, University of Chicago and NORC, University of Chicago and NORC, University of Chicago
• Keywords: call attempts ; calling rules ; call history

Abstract

The Reach 2010 Risk Factor Survey requires a minimum of seven call attempts to be made over a two-week period in order to complete a household screener. For the first two years of the study, calling rules and a detailed schedule were developed to meet these requirements. As the sample for each community was released in batches and sample sizes for later batches were calculated using results from earlier batches, the data collection period for a particular community could sometimes be several months long. Because REACH 2010 collects yearly cross-sectional samples and is interested in charting progress from year to year, it was in the project's best interest to maintain comparability of time periods and compress the data collection period for any one community as much as possible. After analyzing call history data from the first two years of data collection, we decided that reducing the number of days over which the seven calls were made would allow for a shorter overall data collection period for each community without compromising data quality. In the third year of data collection, the calling rules have been modified.