Agenda - Council Work Session - 04/08/2014

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Data Collection for Citizen Surveys Often the decision about the method for collecting citizen survey data comes down to mail or phone. Staff from many jurisdictions often are more familiar with telephone surveys perhaps because these are the surveys typically reported in the national news or used for political campaigns. NRC's telephone survey research is among the best in the country but telephone survey research is not the only or necessarily best way to go. Consider these factors, below, and refer to the matrix at the end to compare data collection by phone, mail, in- person or Web as you make the best choice for your community. Before you settle on phone 1. Don't choose a method that will annoy your residents It doesn't seem long ago that phone was the preferred method for collecting survey data. How quickly things have changed. Answering machines, call blocking, do- not -call lists and residents' overall annoyance at being bothered by telephone solicitors leaves phone the preferred data collection mode for only two groups of surveyors these days — those who are in a hurry, like political pollsters who have to track changes in opinions from speech to speech and those survey research companies that have invested mightily in scores of telephone computer stations and software. There is a lot of overhead required to keep those phone banks full of customers. While NRC still recommends phone surveys for clients who require quick turnaround or are trying to reach only low literacy residents, our citizen surveys now are conducted mostly by mail and, with the right approach, limited English proficiency residents participate more actively than they can by phone. Our mail response rates regularly exceed phone response rates achieved by other companies. 2. Telephone response rates are plummeting Speaking of response rates, because fewer and fewer people are willing to participate in telephone surveys, mailed surveys tend to achieve better response rates than phone. As Curtin and others wrote in a recent Public Opinion Quarterly' article, "...without better approaches to both contacting respondents and persuading them to be interviewed, the long term future of telephone research does not appear promising." (p.97) Cell phones don't help either, and those who have abandoned land lines in favor of cells tend to represent a demographic that is particularly hard to reach — the student or young working population. It is not only of questionable integrity to include cell users who pay for airtime, the fairest interpretation of the 'Curtin, R., Presser, S. and Singer, E. "Changes in Telephone Survey Nonresponse over the Past Quarter Century." Public Opinion Quarterly. Spring 2005, 69 (1), 87 -98. © National Research Center, Inc. 2955 Valmont Rd, Suite 300, Boulder, CO 80301 www.n- r -c.com 303 - 444 -7863