Methodologies
Telephone
Interviews
The SESRC
maintains a telephone interview laboratory, with a total of
60 interview stations available for telephone interviewing
and data entry on a daily basis. An additional 7 telephone
interview stations are available to handle overflow work.
A separate
12-station training and research laboratory is also available.
All interviewing stations contain a telephone, headset and
computer with computer assisted telephone interview (CATI)
software installed. All stations have Windows 98 or Windows
XP Pro installed and are connected to the SESRC local area
network for file storage and program access.
The SESRC
hires new and experienced interviewers to conduct telephone
interviews. All interviewers are trained in proper interviewing
and probing techniques. The SESRC trains interviewers in the
correct use of the CATI
software used to record the answers as they are received during
the telephone interview.
Standard interviewing times are scheduled from 8 a.m. to 9
p.m. Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, and
2 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday Pacific Standard Time. These hours
can be adjusted specificallay for contracts needing calling
for other time zones.
SESRC can hire sufficient numbers of interviewers from the
population of University students seeking work to fill all
interview stations if necessary.
SESRC employs approximately 250 temporary, hourly employees
to conduct data collection activities each year. Of these,
roughly 95% are students at Washington State University. Nearly
10% of the interviewers are bilingual, which enables us to
conduct interviews in Spanish, Russian, Korean, Vietnamese,
and Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese).
SESRC employs a dialing protocol providing for a mimimum of
one call attempt per record in the sample up to any number
of attempts specified for the project. The calling protocol
insures that every telephone number in the sample is attempted
at various times of the day and days of the week. The protocol
is designed to maximize response rates.
SESRC routinely employs refusal conversion strategies to call
back respondents who initially gave a soft refusal to complete
the telephone survey. These techniques often add between 5%
and 10% to the response rate.
SESRC monitors survey progress through reports (i.e. disposition
reports, productivity reports). Some of these reports are
posted on-line and are available for both SESRC staff and
clients to review.
Data
Collection supervisors monitor between 5% and 10% of all telephone
interviews. Monitors are able to listen to the interviews
on the telephone and to observe the data being entered by
the interviewer as the survey is conducted. The monitoring
process focuses on the interviewer’s use of probing
and feedback phrases, accuracy in reading questions and recording
responses, rapport with respondent, and ability to persuade
respondents to complete the interview. Immediate feedback
is given to each interviewer who is monitored, on his/her
performance during the interview.SESRC also tracks performance
for calling.
SESRC has substantial experience in translating questionnaires
and working with bi-lingual respondents. The standard method
used by SESRC is called a back-translation method. SESRC uses
back-translation methods to evaluate the quality of the translation
process. SESRC has translated instruments in Russian, Ukranian,
Spanish, Korean, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Vietnamese,
Japanese and Cambodian.
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