Adaptive Contact Strategies in Telephone and Face-to-Face Surveys

• Activity Number: 484
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 4, 2010 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): James Wagner*+
• Companies: University of Michigan
• Keywords: Calling Strategies ; Nonresponse ; Responsive Design

Abstract

In attempting to contact households for a survey, it is necessary to determine the timing of each call. Often, average "best" times to call are used in order to determine when to place the first call(s). The timing of subsequent calls is then governed by very general rules. In fact, what we really want to know is the household-specific probability of contact at different times of the day and days of the week. Unfortunately, the amount of data we have varies from household to household. To address this issue, random-intercept models are fit with the household as a grouping factor. The probability of contact is estimated for each of several call "windows" and the window with the highest probability of contact is preferred for the next call. The estimates from these models are updated daily in order to guide the decision about timing the next call. The method is evaluated experimentally.