Telephone Surveys

[MasterRacker]

My local City Gov't wants to do a small telephone opinion poll. It's easy enough to pick a random sample of numbers from the local directory but obviously that will not include cell numbers. You can make guess at numbers just by knowing the prefixes in local use by the various carriers but even if you get an active number there's no way to know it's actually registered to an address within the city limits.

Has anyone had to do this before? I assume we'll most likely have to contact the carriers, but what office do you even call?

Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[kwbMitel]

My first thought is that you should consult your legal department.

Many if not most areas have made it illegal to call random numbers. You must have a list of allowable numbers to call. Additionally, countries such as Canada and the US have Do-not-call registries and the fines can be quite steep if you diverge from the rules. I've heard inforcement is lax but if you work for a municipality you could get in a heap of legal difficulties.

*******************************************************
Occam's Razor - All things being equal, the simplest solution is the right one.

 

[MasterRacker]

We've got legal advice available as the final arbiter but as I understand it do not calls lists mainly apply to commercial telemarketing. Governments among some other groups have more leeway. My main goal right now is to determine how to get the list of usable numbers in the first place.

Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[kwbMitel]

Assuming your in NA this site will provide you with a list of office codes (NNX) within any area code (NPA) and the respective carrier.

It won't tell you which numbers are active but it's a start.

*******************************************************
Occam's Razor - All things being equal, the simplest solution is the right one.

 

[kwbMitel]

Assuming your in NA this site will provide you with a list of office codes (NNX) within any area code (NPA) and the respective carrier.

It won't tell you which numbers are active but it's a start.

http://www.localcallingguide.com/lca_prefix.php

*******************************************************
Occam's Razor - All things being equal, the simplest solution is the right one.

 

[Sympology]

Hope your operators have a thick skin.

If someone cold called my mobile (cell) for a b****y survey, I would not be happy.

Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[MasterRacker]

All the national polling organizations are including cell phones. for example:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/110383/does-gallup-call-cell-phones.aspx

They have to to get a truly representative sample.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/110383/does-gallup-call-cell-phones.aspx

I know cell companies aren't just going to pass out a directory and I haven't found a single reference yet to how these groups get their number lists. Like I said before, even know a "local" prefix isn't enough since I need to know the registered address is inside city limits.



Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[IPGuru]

Surveys may be exempt from do not call lists( They are in the UK unfortunatly)
but anyone calling my "TPS" refgistered phone invariably gets a hard time.

Do not propgate this offensive practice of randomly calling people who have not volunteered to have their personal time invaded, you will not make any friends.

 

[Mountainbear]

I don't know of any such directory for cell phones. When I got my cell phone the only question was "Where do we send the bill?" By their very nature, cell phones have no civic address, just a billing address. If a mother gives her daughter a cell phone before going to University out of town, the registered address will be within city limits. You may have better luck calling all cell phones in the local prefix and making your first question "Do you live in city limits?"
As far as finding the numbers, you may need to randomly generate them. Good luck.

 

[KE407122]

Phoning random NNX's within a municipality They also end up at Emergency bureaus and Downstream agencies. Under agreement with the carrier neither the municipality or the bureau can divulge these numbers to either the American Do Not Call list or the Canadian Marketing Assn' DNC List.

I'm to the point now at home; that regardless of the purpose of the unsolicited call I simply place the phone down on the counter as soon as they speak and jam up their line until they decide to hang up.

And try enforcing Telecom Regulatory Policy across borders.



KE407122
'Who is this guy named Lo Cel and why does he keep paging me?'

 

[donb01]

There is no cell phone directory - not one that's publicly accessible anyway, and most of the reason is (and I use the term loosely):

As far as I know it is "illegal" to cold call cell phones (in the U.S. anyway). The primary reason for this is that a LOT of people would have to pay money for those calls. It's not like a home phone where incoming calls don't cost you anything, and not all cellular customers get free incoming calls.

Nonetheless it IS sometimes possible to look up cell phone numbers. If you are careful and find one that's not a scam you can sometimes pay to use an online search portal to find information, and in a LOT of cases people are just careless with their cell phone numbers and put them in public areas of social networking sites where bots can pick them up and add them to their database, or just making purchases from national pizza chains or other stores and places that sell their customer lists can get your number floating around out there.

Personally, if someone calls my cell phone for that kind of stuff they will get a 2-word response followed by disconnection, and then I will report the incoming number to my carrier, who will take action if there are other complaints about the same number.

I agree with the other poster regarding the do not call list. It's there and it's a nice thing, but they won't take any action related to abuse unless they receive a fairly numerous amount of complaints. If you're only going to cold call 50 people you might not have a problem, but if you get into the hundreds and enough complain you could find yourself in hot water!

 

[MasterRacker]

Organizations such as Gallup and Pew Research can and do include cell phones in surveys. My guess is that they're using proprietary lists they've compiled in house somehow.

Do not call lists apply to commercial cold calling, but do not apply to governments, political campaigns, etc. I don't know the exact nature of the exemptions. In our case, we're proceeding with only numbers hand picked from the published local directory.

What's going to be interesting is how this plays out after a few years of number portability wen you won't necessarily be able to tell what's a landline and whats a cell from just the prefix. Also, how are VOIP softphones, and Google Voice numbers classified?

Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[Mountainbear]

My cell phone is used only for work, if I was asked to participate in a survey, I would be tempted to send an invoice for my services and cellular time. I wouldn't expect to receive a cheque but I would be tempted to try it for fun.

 

[cwc3]

thats just what we need is a robot ringing our cellphones I am surprised it took this long to catch on ....

 

[KE407122]

I wouldn't worry about it. Just tear a number of pages out of the local directory and start calling.

With a large sample, random events produce samples that are proportional to the population.

I'm sure there are a significant number of the local population that will not or cannot provide public comment, nevermind do so over the phone. 60% of the calls made won't get answered and 30%(wireless)aren't called.

A small sample is just that. To apply it across a population, you may as well roll a die six times and pray you don't get six, five times in a row.



KE407122
'Who is this guy named Lo Cel and why does he keep paging me?'

 

[Mountainbear]

I agree with KE407122. Now that I think of it I am not sure you need the cell phones to get a good representation.
If you use a paper phone directory you will find:
1.A lot of people will have their home phone forwarded to their cell.
2.Many people who answer and only have cell phones will be living with someone who has a land line, (Mom and Dad).
3.Many people who have a cell phone also have a land line and would be covered that way.
4. using a phone survey you will be missing out on the people who have neither a cell or land line, and those who don't answer unknown calls.

Perhaps a street survey would be more accurate. Or depending on the topic do you want a true random sample (which can never TRULY happen, or a targeted market.

Out of curiosity, what is the survey topic?

 

[MasterRacker]

This article is a little old but lists some of the differences that have been showing up between landline and cellphone demographics. It's not a huge deal yet, but it could become one and even now it can make a difference when polling a tight political race.

Our current survey topic is priority of city provided services and where people would prefer cuts vs tax increases.

Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[KE407122]

Quite the dichotomy; should just nul any statistical inference to both services and taxes.

Wireless subscribers are those that have embraced trends in technologies and have the money to do it. The other half are more marginalized, transient, but are too hot with the phone company and use pay-as-you-go phoneplans rather than post bond for a land-line service.

KE407122
'Who is this guy named Lo Cel and why does he keep paging me?'