At first glance, the numbers are both dismal and daunting.
Telephone surveying is undergoing a sea change.
According to the Pew Research Center (based on figures from the National Center for Health Statistics), 25% of U.S. households are cell phone only.
Households are jettisoning landline service at an accelerating pace.
Cell only households are more prevalent in various subgroups of the population: half (49% of adults aged 25 to 29) and 30% of Hispanics are cell only.
As Pew states, “survey researchers…face a difficult decision as to whether to include cell phones in their samples. Doing so adds significantly to the cost and complexity of surveys at a time when respondent cooperation is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain.”
Some in the market research community have opted for Web-only surveying as a replacement for telephone. But this presents an even larger issue. In spite of the shift to cell service, phone service overall is near ubiquity. Only 2% of U.S. households have neither landline or cell service. Some 38% of U.S. households do not have internet service at home.
The market research industry is arguing furiously about how to solve the problems with telephone surveying. Thus far, there is little consensus. But the effort must continue.
Meanwhile, market researchers in the corporate world can rest relatively easily. Surveying out of customer databases by phone continues to work and continues to be statistically robust. The challenge on the corporate side is in sampling and data collection outside their own customers. Hybrid phone surveys, combining both cell and landline, are still relatively untested and their reliability is still largely unknown with unanswered questions about the representativeness of surveying via cell in dual landline-cell households.
Market research will clearly become only more challenging in the near future, at least.
But, I guess that’s why market researchers get paid the big bucks, right?
With a smile,
Dr. Bob
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