Telephone sampling is a set of techniques used to generate samples in telephone survey data collection. Telephone surveys have lower cost and time of data collection than face-to-face survey methods. (Telephone surveys are also conducted for other types of units, such as business establishments. This discussion is limited to telephone household surveys.). Cost and timeliness advantages outweigh potential loss in accuracy due to failure to cover households without telephones. However, since households without telephones vary in character over time and across countries and key subgroups, researchers must decide in any particular application whether non-coverage bias is a potentially serious source of error before choosing to use a telephone survey.
Telephone sampling methods use traditional sampling techniques or modifications of those techniques designed to address the nature of the materials available for sample selection. The materials, or frames, are of two basic types: lists of.
