Comparing telephone and face-to-face interviewing in the United Kingdom - ARCHIVED

This paper presents results from methodological experiments comparing telephone and face-to-face interviewing in surveys of the general population. The relatively low level of telephone ownership in the United Kingdom, especially among the less privileged, argues the need for a dual-mode approach combining telephone interviews with face-to-face interviews for those without telephones. This approach depends on the absence of differential mode-effects on the answers obtained or on the ability to account for these effects when they occur.