Research First
Before You Act, Ask
Telephone Surveys
Telephone surveys provide the most cost effective method for researching with large, geographically dispersed populations. The presence of a telephone interviewer for the survey reduces errors and addresses potential biases resulting from interpretation problems on behalf of the participants.
Research First has its own 'all Kiwi' CATI-based call centre, staffed by trained and experienced interviewers. This facility means Research First is able to offer cost effective and high quality telephone surveying.
Research First has considerable experience in delivering high quality telephone survey outcomes. This includes achieving high response rates for a number of client surveys. This experience demonstrates that there are a number of key factors to achieving useful telephone survey outcomes. These are:
- Questionnaire Design:
- There is considerable evidence that both participation and completion rates for surveys are negatively correlated with questionnaire difficulty in general and length in particular. In terms of participation and completion, short, simple questionnaires are more effective than long, complex ones. Research First can help you to design a questionnaire which balances purposefulness and brevity, with the total survey ideally taking no more than 12 minutes to complete. Research First also has considerable social science experience which enables it to design questionnaires that take account of potential biases such as social desirability.
- Participation:
- Typically, telephone survey research achieves response rates between 20% to over 50%. Research First increases these response rates by maximising the number of call-backs (see below)and using suitably trained telephone interviewers.
- Robustness:
- The difference between high quality, reliable telephone surveys and other kinds of surveys is the number of call-backs used. In general, higher response rates are achieved with more ‘call backs’ made to each non-answering number. Research First uses six call-backs for each originally selected number.
Focus Groups
Interviews
Workshops
Stakeholder panels
Phone Surveys
Mail Surveys
Online Surveys
CSM
Corporate
Rural
Government
Education
Health
Carl Davidson
Roger Larkins
Rachel Campbell
Philip Sapsford
Barbi Larkins
The Calling Centre
Research First, Level 1 / 320 Manchester Street, PO Box 5596,
Papanui, Christchurch 8542
Phone: (508) 4RESEARCH (508) 473 732 info@researchfirst.co.nz