Practical Guidelines for Dual-Frame RDD Survey Methodology

• Activity Number: 391
• Type: Roundtables
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 6, 2013 : 12:30 PM to 1:50 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Mansour Fahimi*+
• Companies: Marketing Systems Group
• Keywords: Dual-frame RDD ; Optimal Sample Allocation ; Design Effect

Abstract

While addition of cellular numbers has offered an effective remedy for improving coverage of the traditional landline RDD samples, current practice of the resulting dual-frame methodology is subject to technical and operational inconsistencies. On the technical side, most survey researchers rely on ad-hoc assumptions to determine the mixture of landline and cellular numbers for their samples. This inconsistency, which is mostly due to the unavailability of current counts of cell-phone-only households, has implications for both sample selection and subsequent methods used to weight the resulting survey data. On the operational front, there are surveys that continue to rely on outdated data collection protocols, such as screening out respondents reached via cellular numbers who are also reachable by landline numbers, which sap the available budget without producing any notable gains. We will introduce practical guidelines for dual-frame RDD surveys that ameliorate the existing inconsistencies for sample selection and weighting applications, as well as eliminating the need for the costly practice of screening out responding dual-users.