Quality management for telephone surveys in the context of mixed-mode studies

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Michael Häder; Dr. Sabine Häder, since 4/2017
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2014 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 257727195

Mixed Mode Surveys play an increasing role in population surveys when considering declining response rates.In this context telephone surveys are of extreme importance: Within mixed mode surveys, they are used both for the recruitment phase and for the actual interviews. In recent years important insights into the functioning of telephone interviews could be obtained in DFG funded projects at the TU Dresden and GESIS. In particular, we could shed light on the parallel use of fixed and mobile phones in surveys, the measurement of response quality, the sampling and weighting. However, for telephone surveys there are still many open methodological questions. Here a secondary data analysis would be of great value. It should analyze the huge amount of process data of the project partners. The aim of the project is to give justified recommendations for sampling and for an optimal design of the fieldwork for telephone surveys in the context of mixed-mode surveys. This would be a knowledge transfer from academic research to survey institutions in terms of the tender: The experience of the studies CELLA1, CELLA2 and mobile panel would directly run into the analysis of the data sets of the application partners. This way at the same time new knowledge could be generated.That these results of the project were very much in demand, we can conclude from our work at Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences. Here often transparent recommendations for telephone surveys are required, which we currently cannot provide, because further research (such as the one intended) is still needed.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants (Transfer Project)
• Participating Institution: Robert Koch-Institut (RKI); USUMA GmbH
• Participating Persons: Professor Dr. Marek Fuchs; Professor Dr. Ralf Münnich
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Privatdozent Dr. Siegfried Gabler, until 4/2017