Nonresponse in an individual register sample telephone survey in Lucerne (Switzerland)

Abstract

Introduction: Surveying people on the telephone has a number of advantages compared to face-to-face interviews, especially if the survey is carried out by telephone centres (Häder 2009): • Large samples can be realized within short periods. • It is easy to call households that are difficult to access frequently. • Monitoring interviewers (defining cases as ineligible, interviewing the actually sampled individuals, conducting the interview according to defined protocols, etc.) is easy. • The influence of third persons is likely to have no or only minor effects. • Interviewer effects are likely to be smaller. • The fear of letting an interviewer into the house does not play a role in telephone surveys. • Many face-to-face surveys need (regional) clustering of sample cases which causes design effects over and above those caused by interviewers who work (regional) sample points. The consequence is that a higher number of interviews are necessary in face-to-face surveys to obtain the same precision.