Polling And Cell-Phones (Anybody Have Updated Info???)

WillyT

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Sun Aug-03-08 12:11 PM
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Polling And Cell-Phones (Anybody Have Updated Info???)

How Serious Is Polling's Cell-Only Problem?
The Landline-less Are Different and Their Numbers Are Growing Fast

by Scott Keeter, Director, Survey Research, Pew Research Center
June 20, 2007

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Twenty years ago the survey research profession -- having grown comfortable with telephone interviewing as an alternative to personal interviewing for conducting surveys -- worried mostly about the roughly 7% of U.S. households that could not be interviewed because they had no telephone. Today our concern is somewhat different, and potentially more serious. According to government statistics released last month, nearly 13% of U.S. households (12.8%) cannot now be reached by the typical telephone survey because they have only a cell phone and no landline telephone.1

If people who can only be reached by cell phone were just like those with landlines, their absence from surveys would not create a problem for polling. But cell-only adults are very different. The National Health Interview Survey found them to be much younger, more likely to be African American or Hispanic, less likely to be married, and less likely to be a homeowner than adults with landline telephones. These demographic characteristics are correlated with a wide range of social and political behaviors.

Polling's cell phone problem is a new one. In early 2003, just 3.2% of households were cell-only. By the fall of 2004, pollsters and journalists were openly worrying about the potential bias that cell-only households might create for political surveys. The National Election Pool's exit poll found that 7.1% of those who voted on Election Day had only a cell phone, and these cell-only voters were somewhat more Democratic and liberal than those who said they had a landline telephone. But pre-election telephone polls in that election were generally accurate, and pollsters felt that they had dodged the proverbial bullet. This fortunate outcome was a result of the fact that the statistical weighting employed by most telephone polls helped to correct for the missing respondents. The fact that the cell-only group in 2004 was still a relatively small part of the overall population also helped mitigate the impact of the problem.

But given the speed with which the number of cell-only households has increased, there is growing concern within the polling business about how long the landline telephone survey will remain a viable data collection tool, at least by itself. At last month's annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), survey research's top professional organization, an entire series of research panels focused on the cell phone issue. At one of the panels, a government researcher told the audience that the size of the cell-only group could approach 25% by the end of 2008 if the current rate of increase is sustained.

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More: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/515/polling-cell-only-problem

With the large influx of "Cell Only" young, liberal, ethnic, etc. could the polls we're seeing be significantly off???

:shrug: