Mobile Phone Surveys: Empirical Findings from a Research Project

The growing number of mobile-only households across Europe and in Northern America is at present one of the key challenges for survey research. So far, frames for telephone survey sampling include only landline phone numbers. But in future landline phone surveys and mobile phone surveys will have to be combined. However, at present there are a lot of practical questions unsolved. In this paper we want to present some findings of a recent research project where we recruited individuals for an experimental mobile phone panel. Our main objective was to study their response behavior. In the first chapter we explain the motivation for our research. Then we describe the fieldwork of our study in detail to show which efforts are necessary to conduct a mobile phone survey. In the third chapter we show some findings on the response behavior of the panelists. Finally, we give an outlook on future telephone surveys where the dual frame approach will become the usual method.