Telephone poll

Telephone surveys (actually telephone surveys ) are a survey method that usually takes place with computer assistance ( Computer Assisted Telephone Interview ).

Methodological aspects

Advantages of the telephone survey

• In most of the countries where market and opinion research takes place, almost every household has a telephone connection. The medium of the telephone thus opens up almost the entire population .
• The undesired falsification effects of non-verbal communication between interviewer and interviewee are lower in telephone conversations than in face-to-face interviews: the interviewer can neither see nor smell the interviewer, so that only the language has emotional effects that could influence the response behavior (pleasant voice, researcher Clay), can transport.

Cons of the telephone survey

• The interviewer cannot show the respondent anything.
• The accessibility of the elements of the population via the telephone network is subject to fluctuations, because there are people
  • without phone book entry (which, depending on the method used, cannot be recorded (see RLD procedure ))
  • who are entered and / or reachable under several telephone numbers (and can therefore be more easily recorded)
• The willingness to take part in telephone surveys has fallen sharply in parts of the population, particularly due to the influence of telephone marketing.

Since the above-mentioned differences correlate with certain socio-demographic criteria, the representativeness of the sample is no longer guaranteed. The requirement that every element of the population must be sampled with the same probability is no longer met.

In the US election campaign in 2012, another weak point in the telephone survey became clear: If the surveying institute relies on landline numbers, younger voters are asked too seldom and the results are falsified.

economic aspects

• The interviewer does not have to go to the interviewee. Multiple attempts at contact and interviews that are carried out in several time blocks have no significant cost consequences.

• The decline in telephone charges over the past ten years means that telephone surveys can also be made inexpensively worldwide.

Legal position

Telephone surveys that are tied to a product or a product group and thus help the commissioning company to improve the product or which can be regarded as advertising for such a product can be illegal under the UWG . They are considered cold calls and thus represent a serious invasion of the privacy of the person called, unless he has expressly given his consent ( opt-in ). Corresponding judgments were made by the higher regional courts in Stuttgart and Oldenburg, as well as the regional courts in Berlin, Hamburg and Potsdam, and the Rathenow district court.

Web links

Wiktionary: Telephone poll  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

1. ^ Matthias Kolb: Obama's super strategist reveals his tactics. , sueddeutsche.de of November 21, 2012, accessed on November 21, 2012
2. ↑ Lawyer Stefan Richter: ... we do not do any advertising, but scientific market research!  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.