Definition:
A telephone survey is a method of data collection through telephone interviews with respondents, which is also known as a Computer-Assisted Telephonic Interview or CATI for short. During the telephone interview, the interviewer asks the respondent questions from the questionnaire and records the respondent’s answers in code or verbatim.
Types of telephone interviews: depending on the type and purpose of the research, there are three types of telephone interviews:
Structured telephone interviews: Structured interviews are usually short and include closed questions. These interviews are used to collect quantitative data.
Semi-structured telephone interviews: Semi-structured interviews are a combination of open and closed questions. These interviews are used to collect quantitative and qualitative data.
In-depth telephone interviews: In-depth telephone interviews include open questions and are suitable for collecting qualitative data. These types of interviews are long and a discussion guide is used instead of a questionnaire.
Advantages:
Correct understanding of the questions: conducting the interview by the interviewer guarantees the quality of the collected data; This is because the interviewer can solve the misunderstanding by understanding the questions for the respondent.
Cost-effectiveness: Telephone interviews are cost-effective compared to face-to-face interviews.
Fast data collection: The speed of data collection in a telephone survey is higher than in a face-to-face survey.
Higher response rate: Telephone interviews have a higher response rate.
Quality control: It is possible to control the quality of the entire data collection process, including sampling, respondent screening, etc.
Flexibility: Different types of questions can be used in a telephone questionnaire. Also, you can use a questionnaire or a discussion guide (DG) to conduct an interview.
Wider geographical range: In a telephone survey, it is possible to conduct interviews in a wide national and global range.
* The following options are the advantages of in-depth telephone interviews:
Reaching the B2B audience: Reaching B2B audiences through telephone interviews is more appropriate than online.
Get a lot of data from the respondent: Some telephone interviews can last for more than an hour, which helps to collect more data from the respondent.
Go deeper into the topic: more and deeper topics can be explored with the respondent.
Limitations:
the interview is boring for the respondent if the interview is prolonged, the possibility of disconnecting the call by the respondent, the inability to observe the body language of the respondent, The shorter interview time, and the possibility of geographic area error due to the fact that data collection is based on people’s phone numbers (in the absence of correct geographic screening) are some of the limitations of the telephone survey method.
