Towards Determining an Optimal Contact Attempt Threshold for a Large-Scale Personal Visit Survey
Adam Safir
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Lucilla Tan
Bureau of Labor Statistics
While improving the design of the survey instrument and increasing the options for more convenient and/or efficient data capture are two important ways for maximizing returns on the survey operations budget, there is an additional dimension in personal-visit surveys for discretionary action that can make a difference - setting a maximum threshold for the number of contact attempts, or the level of effort, expended to resolve a case. In particular, the cost of contact attempts can be significant for personal-visit surveys with eligible sample units spread over an expansive geographic area. Before fielding a large-sample test of a proposed "optimal" contact attempt threshold, the authors initiated this study as a verification of findings from an earlier study (Safir and Tan 2009) that recommended 7 attempts as the threshold for resolving a sample unit's final disposition. Using more recent data and additional evaluation metrics, the authors perform a retrospective analysis of first wave panel data from the Consumer Expenditure Interview Survey (CEQ) collected between April 2012 and March 2014.