Telephone interview
The telephone survey is a common method in demoscopy and so-called opinion research as well as primary market research , particularly through the development of call centers . A common form today is the Computer Assisted Telephone Interview . Compared to other methods, the telephone survey is relatively quick and inexpensive. Compared to the personal interview , the anonymity is greater. According to some researchers, this means that the respondents' inhibition threshold for sensitive questions is lower. However, such a survey is sometimes combined with advertising, something in Germanyis not allowed. There is less willingness to participate than in face-to-face surveys because those called refuse to respond to the survey or answer certain questions. Visual aids (list templates, card games) cannot be used. Due to the lack of such tools and the purely linguistic communication, the interviewee can easily find the interview monotonous or tiring. Complex scales or classifications are hardly possible. The interviews have to be significantly shorter than with other types of survey. A maximum of 15-25 minutes is a guideline.
Requirements for a usable result are:
- good planning in advance
- a sufficiently large number of participants
As with other survey methods, doubts about the representativeness are raised in the telephone survey . However, that depends on the subjects and circumstances of the survey. In the past, often only the so-called “head of the family” was interviewed. The birthday method was used as an additional aid for this. In more recent times, there has also been the fact that young people in particular have been doing without a landline connection and using their mobile phone as a replacement, so that this age group is often no longer reached. Due to the increased frequency of telephone marketing, the willingness to conduct telephone surveys is also decreasing. This is why online surveys over the Internet are being used more and more frequently .
In research, telephone interviews are used in combination with questionnaires . This combination was used, for example, in the life expectancy survey of the Federal Institute for Population Research.
literature
- Public Relations Manual . published by Werner Mühlbradt, Chapter IX: The Demoskopie: Opinion and market research. Luchterhand Verlag 1980
References and comments
- ↑ https://www.vzhh.de/themen/telefon-internet/telefonwerbung-das-sollten-sie-wissen
- ↑ population-representative surveys should have more than 1,000 test subjects
- ↑ Reto U. Schneider : Yes. No. I do not know. January 2006 in NZZ Folio , magazine of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung
- ↑ Karla Gärtner: Lifestyles and their influence on health and life expectancy - The BiB's life expectancy survey. Project and material documentation, Federal Institute for Population Research, Wiesbaden 2001, page 7