Mobile Phones: Welcome to the Nomadic World

The explosion in cell phone use over the past few years has been a source of concern more than inspiration to pollsters. Yet they overlook how a device carried everywhere opens up new interviewing possibilities focused on the individual rather than the household.

For a long time, surveys conducted by phone at the home of respondents were the gold standard in the minds of many pollsters. The continued growth of phone surveys over almost twenty years was made possible by the CATI systems' efficient sample management and survey administration and the method's speed and close monitoring, high response rates, and lesser cost versus face-to-face. Statisticians were pleased with the almost-perfect correspondence between a phone number and a household whose exact address was known. Selecting an individual from a household was a simple matter for both random and selective sampling.

The deterioration in the quality of phone listings over the last few years (unlisted numbers, cell phone-onlys, etc.) has been a major setback to pollsters. Random digit dialing and related technologies, however, have allowed them to regain ground. The advent of Internet telephony (VoIP) has complicated some tasks for pollsters, but chances are they will get back on track. Constantly getting around these problems has distracted pollsters from a distinct advantage of the rise in cell phone use over landlines: the phone, previously a piece of household equipment, has become individualized, an extension of us, a tool we use for more and more communication purposes and even to manage our time.

To measure the cell phone's potential as an interview method, we need to remember that it is not a landline.

Solely cell phone users, or "cell phone-onlys," are not just young urban people on a budget looking to save the expense of a landline. For cell phone-onlys, a cell phone is more than a phone because it is theirs exclusively. It is their point of contact wherever they are and at all times. There's always a quiet spot at the office or the university, in a cafй or store or on the street. And anywhere a conversation can happen, of course, so can a survey.

People cultivate their personal relationships outside the home, and technology is in sync with the increasing individualism of advanced societies. The cell phone phenomenon has gone beyond a subject for marketing studies or a mere trend to be taken into account for improving our sample quality. It offers real prospects for the way mobile consumers are recruited and interviewed. Aren't people more inclined to answer personal questions when contacted on their cell phones? The relative privacy afforded by cell phones helps more than hinders the interview process. But don't think a cell phone guarantees honesty; the questionnaire - not the contact method - is the determining factor. To measure the cell phone's potential as an interview method, we need to remember that it is not a landline. The benefit of people's close relationship with their cell phones gets overshadowed by attempts to treat cell phones like landlines. We need a new interview model, involving new ways of sampling, collecting, and weighting information. We also need to imagine other ways of asking questions. In a direct, self-administered questionnaire, questions need to be short, answers offered in the form of icons rather than text, and the presentation adapted to the respondent's phone. Just as for online surveys, there are issues raised by broadband and third-generation technology (3G), with its promise of sending audio and video to selected subscribers. Experiments in cell phone-only questionnaires (conducted by an interviewer) show response rates similar to landline polls, but while the quality of the interview is largely unaffected by location, there is greater need for brevity in landline polls.

Sampling presents an interesting challenge. The flexibility people have on their cell phones means greater availability and more avenues for contact, including push SMS (text messages), MMS (multimedia messaging), via Bluetooth networks, and calls from interviewers (with or without text messages). Questionnaires may be completed immediately or later. Participation rates vary according to contact and interview methods and time of contact.

Reconciling all these contact and interview methods with the strict demands of random sampling and the need to know a respondent's inclusion probability in a selected sample clearly presents a problem, but that is no reason to reject cell phone interviews out of hand. Not every study conforms to strict research methods; the solution lies more in correcting potential biases than in systematically applying methods that are dogmatic and unworkable. In this sense, we need to think about collecting and using results as two separate issues. Pollsters will increasingly rely on improved interview- data modeling.

Cell phone interviews, with all their benefits and downsides, are without a doubt one of the collection methods of the future. The many ways of contacting people include universal directories with cell phone numbers, random digit dialing, access panels, or customer lists and push technology. Not to mention that cell phones are an integral part of our daily lives; when dealing with banks or car-rental agencies, people routinely give their cell phone number. Through cell phones, people's moods can be captured close to the action, fresh from a purchase or exposure to a public advertising display.

Obviously, interview protocols will have to be adapted to the phone's ergonomics as well as legal constraints. In any case, the eminently personal cell phone has lost its toy-of-the-elite status and become almost an essential item. It is becoming the easiest way to access services like taxis, online banking, video downloads from our favorite artists, and even the nightly news. Cell phone use is exploding on all continents, reaching saturation point in some countries. Cell phones will be the most universal way to access consumers wherever they are and at any time of the day. It's time pollsters took a closer look.

To learn more about research in Canada, please contact Leslie Speirs, Senior Vice President, Ipsos Reid Direct.