Understanding the Respondent – a Key to Improve our Data Collection Strategies?

1. Understanding the Respondent – a Key to Improve our Data Collection Strategies? Seminar on Statistical Data Collection 26th September 2013 Anton Johansson, Statistics Sweden

2. Data collection and total surveyexperience All three steps are a part of the overall surveyexperience for the respondent. This presentation focus on the first step – to make contact with the respondent.

3. How to establishcontact • Groves & Couper (1998). Nonresponse in HouseholdSurveys. John Wiley & Sons Inc, Hoboken. Ifwesucceed or not dependsboth on the respondent… Wewant to establishcontact with the respondent. …and ourdata collectionstrategies.

4. The Respondent • Accesible-to-contact • How old is the sample person? • Occupation? • Family situation? • Where does he or she live? Urban or rural areas? • Available telephone numbers? • Impediments to contact • automatically rejecting calls from unknown numbers • At what times is the individual respondent willing to answer to an incoming contact?

5. Our owncontactattempts • Contact strategies • Whenwecall • Howweselect the mostappropriatesamplecase for contact at a given moment (randomly or by someotheralgorithm) • Staffing and scheduling • Whendointerviewers work? • Howmanyinterviewers work at different times of the day? • ”Technology”. • Whatways of contact are available for outgoingcontacts? • Landline/Mobilephone • SMS • E-mail • ”Social media” • Etc • Do ourprocedures and contactstrategieskeep up with changingways of communication?

6. Do weneed to changeourperspective? From ourperspectivewherewewant to contact as manysampleunits as possible… …to a perspectivewhereweacknowledge that we are just one of manyincomingcontacts to the individual respondent?

7. Whatdo the nonrespondents say? • A qualitativestudywasconductedamong nonrespondents in the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the Survey of LivingConditions (SLC).Statistics Sweden, Fjelkegård & Wallenborg, 2013 • The Cognitive Unit at Statistics Sweden conducted interviews with 11 nonrespondent and askedthemabouttheirreasons not to participate. • Quotes what the nonrespondents said about the contacts that were made in the LFS and SLC: “I think it very much depends on what your situation in life is or what you’re doing on the particular day you are calling. For me there is a lot of things going on all the time” “ I get tired of all the people calling that I don’t want to talk to. So that might affect your call as well – although it was the ten telemarketers calling before you that I was actually tired off”.

8. How to make contact? Experiment in the Labour Force survey

9. About the Labour Force Survey (LFS) • Rotating Panel design • Each survey unit is contacted eight times over two years time (every third month) • 29 500 sample units each month • About 3700 sample new sample units each month

10. Noncontacts in the Labour Force Survey • Noncontacts per month in LFS (%). January 2001-July 2013.

11. A new strategy to contact new sampleunits? • Noncontactamongnew sampleunitsin December 2012 • 17 % noncontacts (618 of 3 717 new sampleunits) • Howcouldwereachthosecases? • Experiment with additionalcontactattemptsbetween the two panel waves. Ordinaryfield work (wave 1) Extendedfield work (wave 1) Ordinaryfield work (wave 2)

12. About the experiment • Couldwe make bettercontact with more time and bettercontactattempts? • Collectbettercontact information in advance for the second wave in March 2013. • A subsamplewas taken from the noncontacts in LFS-December (n=309). • Would it lead to a higherresponse rate in LFS-March in the experiment group? Ordinaryfield work (wave 1) Extendedfield work (wave 1) Ordinaryfield work (wave 2)

13. Howweworked with the experiment group • Tailoringcontactattempts • Interviewersusedtheirownexperience in judgingsuitabletimes for contact for the individualsampleunit • Suitable time = when the interviewersuspected that the likelihood of contactwas high • The interviewersusedavailable information about the sampleunit • Administrative registers • Records of previouscontacts • Whencallshadbeenmadeearlier • Whatnumbershadbeenused in thosecontactattempts

14. Results of the extendedfield work • 256 caseswere given contactattemptsduring the extendedfield work • (53 of the 309 caseswerejudged not worthcontacting) • Results for the contactedcases. • Contact with respondent 44% • Contact with respondent (refusal) 3 % • Contact with somebodyelse 27% • No contact at all 26 %

15. Results in the second panel wave (March 2013) • Significantlyhigherresponse rate in the experiment group in LFS-March • Response rate • Control 25% • Experiment 36% • Explanations? • Tailoring of contactattempts – more ”care” abouteachindividual respondent in the experiment group • Experiencedinterviewersdedicated in the experiment

16. Use the same approach in monthlyproduction? • A bigdifference in managing an experiment with 256 sampleunits and sixinterviewers… • …compared to a wholesample – 29 500 sampleunits per month and 250 interviewers • How to tailorcontactstrategies to respondents whilealsoconsideringpracticalimplementation? • Require strong collaborationbetween • IT & technology (CATI-systemfunctionality) • Management (training of interviewers, staffing etc.) • Methods (welldesignedcontactstrategies)

17. Thinkingaboutcontactstrategies as part of the surveyexperience • Eachsampleunitrepresents an individual • Wehave to findgoodways of contacting this individual… • … or at leastavoid bad contactattempts that might cause annoyance… • …whichmightaffect the overall surveyexperience.

18. Tack!