Experience with Mobile Phones and Survey Response Quality

Abstract

Telephone surveys via mobile phones have become increasingly important for the social sciences. The use of mobile phones in interviews is still a novelty. Thus the question arises to what extent the respondents` experience with mobile phones influences the response quality. The German Research Foundation funded a CELLA project to investigate how to conduct mobile phone surveys. CELLA stands for CELl phone and LAndline phone surveys. Technische Universität Dresden, Germany, and GESIS – Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences, Germany, cooperated for that purpose. Data presented in the following section were collected within the frame of CELLA (Telefonbefragungen in der Allgemeinbevölkerung über das Mobilfunknetz 2009, GESIS Köln, DOI: 10.4232/1.4875).

Firstly, an index for the experience in handling mobile phones is presented. This is followed by an examination of correlations between the index and six aspects of response quality. A significant influence of the experience was – against our expectations – not found. The results support the conduct of telephone surveys via mobile phones. Nevertheless, there are numerous determinants with stronger influence, which suggests that further research needs to be done.