Phone Surveys

Technology from Database Systems Corp. lets you develop IVR survey applications using our interactive voice response IVR solutions. Surveys can be initiated by outbound phone calls or can be a response to callers. Using our PACER and WIZARD phone systems with the Smart Message Dialer and survey software, we can call your survey prospects and play a highly focused and custom greeting. We then can give your survey audience the option to take your survey or even talk with a representative, leave a voice message, hear additional information, or simply decline to participate in the survey. The survey can accept touchphone response or can record each question response for later analysis. To view more information regarding our automated phone applications, please visit our Automatic Phone Survey solution web page.

The following is an article relating to call survey techniques and products and services in our business.

In-House or Outsource?

A survey should be done in-house if you have the necessary resources, and want to be closely identified with the project. It should be outsourced if you lack the capacity and experience to select and qualify the appropriate sample and design an effective survey. Remember, surveys require not just field work (data collection), but data entry and tabulation. If your company is very influential, respondents might say what they think you want to hear. In that situation, outsourcing might yield more objective and useful results.

To learn the range of prices for outsourcing the survey, get at least three bids from outside firms. Comparing this price to the cost of doing the survey in-house can be difficult, The cost of doing the same study in-house is not just the direct cost, but the opportunity cost of diverting personnel and resources from other projects to work on the survey.

Sample Design for Mail Surveys

Most mail surveys go to a sample, rather than an entire audience or market. Sample surveys tend to be more timely and less costly than census surveys, and you can be reassured that the scientific validity of sampling is well-established. A sample that randomly selects members from a population with known probability will represent the entire population with known accuracy.

Defining the Population of Interest

Who should the research represent? Perhaps the appropriate population of interest could be individuals (such as magazine readers); establishments (the offices where they work); or firms (the entire company they work for). Consumers and consumer households are other common survey populations.

The pool of interest can be bounded by space (households; rural areas) or time (for instance, subscribers for over one year). The survey objectives might require selection by job function, recent purchasing behavior, age, or gender.

Defining the population of interest leads to creation of the sampling frame. For mail surveys, the usual sampling frame is one or more mailing lists. If the frame does not provide an accurate reflection of the population of interest, the survey will be marred by frame bias. A classic example of frame bias is the use of youthful undergraduate students for general-purpose psychology experiments. Eighteen-year-olds just aren't representative of humanity in general. In the magazine world, frame bias is present in studies that survey magazine recipients (including pass-along readers, and even some non-readers) to learn about the population of magazine readers.