Methodological Issues Related to Telephone Surveys in Hong Kong by SO Moon-tong A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. November 1997Abstract of thesis entitled ‘Methodological Issues Related to Telephone Surveys in Hong Keng’ submitted by SO Moon Tong for the degree of Master of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in November 1997.Abstract Hong Kong is an highly urbanized and densely populated city. It is estimated that the ratic of working residential telephone lines per total (eligible) permanent living quarters is over 100% in 1996 which suggests that the telephone as a communication mediun is popular and indispensable for busy life in Hong Kong, although there exist unlisted subscribers. on the other hand, telephone interviewing has become popular for social science research (particularly in the field of market research) because of the merits of speed and cost-saving. A zeview of the practices of social science research in Hong Kong will be given. Next, some important methodological issues related to telephone surveys, such as sampling coverage, sample design, and the feasibility of conducting computer- assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) etc. will be discussed. Finally, telephone survey errors and survey costs will also be investigated. of all types of survey errors, we will focus on interviewer error and statistical modeling of interviewer variability Published data can be obtained from journals (for example, the JASA) and the Social Science Research Centre of the University of Hong Kong. In this respect, the frequentist approach and Bayesian modeling using the software BUGS are attemptedFuture work will also be suggested as a concluding remark.Contents Acknowledgment Chapter ONE Historical Review of Social Sciences Research in Hong Kong 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Social Science Research in Hong Kong since World War IL 2 1.3 Social Science Research Methodologies 4 1.4 Research Activities Outside the Educational Institutes 7 1.4.1 Research conducted by Government and Voluntary Bodies 7 1.42 Commercial and Political Research 9 1.5 Telephone Surveys 12 1.6 The Structure of the Thesis 4 Chapter TWO Methodological Issues Related toTelephone Surveys 2.1 Introduction 45 2.2: The Coverage of Household Population by Telephones in HongKong 18 22.1 Introduction 18 2.2.2 Concepts and Definitions 19 2.2.3 Telephone Coverage in Hong Kong 20 2.3 Probabilistic Telephone Sampling Methods 25 2.3.1 Introduction 25 2.32 Types of Probabilistic Sampling Methods 28 2.3.3 Type-I Sampling - Directory Sampling 2623.4 Type-tI Sampling - Computer-Assisted Sampling 2.3.4.1 Naive Random Digit Dialing 2.3.4.2 Sophisticated Random Digit Dialing 2.3.5 Type-IIl Sampling - Synthetic Approach 2.4 CATI in Hong Kong Market Research Industry 24.1. What is CATI- A General Introduction 2.4.2 The Experiences in the United States 2.4.3 The Experiences in the United Kingdom 244 A Study of CATI in Hong Kong Research Industry 24.5. Case Study 2.4.5.1 Research Companies 2452 The Census and Statistics Department 2.4.53 The Academie Institutes 2.5 A Callback Model for Telephone Surveys 2.5.1. Introduction 2.52 Assumptions and Basie Concepts of the Model 2.53 An Illustration of Callback Model Chapter THREE Telephone Survey Errors and Survey Cos! 3.1 Integration of Survey Errors and Survey Costs 3.1.1 An Introduction to Survey Errors 3.12 Total Survey Errors 3.2 An Introduction to Survey Costs 3.21 A General Mode! for Cost Function 3.22 Criticism of the Traditional Cost Model 37 60 60 62 63 64 64 64 7 15 15 7 79 80 823.3 A Cost Model for a Centralised Telephone Facility 3.4. Empirical Examples of the Cost of Data Collection in Telephone versus Personal Interview Surveys 3.5. Errors of Telephone Surveys for Households in Hong Kong Chapter FOUR Models of Interviewer Effects 4.1 The Interviewer as a source of Survey Measurement Error 4.1.1 The Issue of Interviewer Effects 4.1.2 Designs for Measuring Interviewer Variance 4.1.3 Selected Models of Interviewer Variance (D Univariate Analysis of Interviewer Variance (A) The Factorial Designs ((B) Hansen - Hurwitz - Bershad (1961) Model (IC) Kish (1962) Model (ID) Anderson & Aitkin (1985): Logistic Regression Model (QE) Stokes’ Model (1988): Logistic Regression Model for Estimation of Interviewer Effects for Categorical Items in Random Digit Dial Telephone Survey (1) Moktivariate Analysis of inerviewer Variance 4.2 Interviewer Effects in Personal Interview Surveys 4.3 Interviewer Effects in Centralised Telephone Surveys 4.4 Explanations for Interviewer Effects Chapter FIVE Bayesian Modeling of Interviewer Effects 5.1 What is BUGS? 5.2. What is MCMC Technique? 84 86 87 90 o1 93 95 95 96 99 101 103 109 in 112 115 121 1225.3 The Gibbs Sampler 5.4 The Convergence Problem of the Gibbs Sampler 5.5 Illustrative Examples 5.5.1 Example 1: Data from the University of Hong Keng 5.5.2 Example 2: Stokes’ Data Chapter SIX Discussion & Future Work Appendix References 124 125 137 139Table Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Table $ Table 6 Table 7 Table 8 Table 9 Table 10 Table 11 Table 12 Table 13 Table 14 Table 15 Table 16 Table 17 Table 18 Table 19 Table 20 Table 21 Ten-year Statistical Review (year ended 31-3-1995) ‘The Ratio of Number of Working Residential Lines (#WRL) per total Permanent Living Quarter (TPLQ) CATI Facilities in UK Survey Organisations (as at May, 1983) USECATI - AlreadyUseCATI BUSINESS - MainBusiness INTEND - IntendToUseCATI WHYNOTI - WhyNotUseCATI RESULT - ResultOfPhonelaterview ATTEMPT - NumberOfeontact TIME - MinutesOflnterview CATI Facilities in HKU, HKST & HKBU (June, 1996) Univariate Distributions for Those Respondents Who Had Got At Least One Partial Interview BUGS Output for the Beta-Binomial Model on Callback Data Direct Costs for Components of Sampling and Data Collection Activities on the Telephone and Personal Interview Surveys Distribution of the Ability to Speak Language in HK, 1991 Census Parameters Estimates for the Labor - Force Variables Model Summary of Pq, Values from Various Personal Interview Surveys Study Descriptions and Summary of Overall Findings Ilustrative Values and Jackknife Estimates of Standard Errors of Pine Percentage of Respondents Giving Positive or Negative Response on Various Consumer Attitudes by Gender of Interviewer Data of Planning to Emigrate i 2 55 58 58 59 60 60 68 B 86a 88 107 illa 12a 13a 120a 127Table 22 Table 23, Table 24 Figure Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8 Figure 9 Figure 10 Figure 11 Estimate of Interested Parameters for Data in Table 21 Deviance and Negative Cross-Validatory Likelihood Parameter Estimates for the WORKING Variable Cumulative Distribution of Interviewer Effect Measures py for nine SRC surveys Graphical Model for Emigration Data Trace of BETAO Trace of SIGMA Trace of DEVIANCE Histogram of BETAO Histogram of SIGMA Histogram of DEVIANCE Autocorrelation Funetion of BETAO Autocorrelation Funetion of SIGMA Autocorrelation Function of DEVIANCE 131 132 135 14a 127 134 134 134 134 134 134 134 134 135Chapter ONE : Historical Review of Social Science: Research in Hong Kong 1.1 Introduction According to the Hong Kong 1991 Census Report, there were 5.7 million local residents and 88 thousand transients and Vietnamese migrants in Hong Kong on the Census reference date, 15 March 1991. The population density, as measured by the number of persons per square kilometer of land area, increased from 4,879 in 1981 to 5,385 in 1991 for the whole territory (Hong Kong 1991 Population Census). King and Lee in 1984 said that '...present-day Hong Kong consists of a high-density central city, a band of industrial and commercial satellites, and an urbanized countryside economically integrated with the central and satellites... This is not an exact but still a valid desctiption of a profile of Hong Kong because the Hong Kong economy has changed to a service economy in the 90's. However, the statement is supported by the fact that the resident population in the New Territories increased markedly front 1.3 million in 1981 to 2.4 million in 1991, so that the rate of increase is about 79% across the decade (Hong Kong 1991 Population Census). Today Hong Kong is a very highly densely populated city, the total estimated population of Hong Kong has increased to 6,307,900 in end- 1995, the population growth rates in percent are 0.9 and 2.1 in 1991 and 1995 respectively (Hong Kong Monthly Digest of Statistics, July 1996, Hong Kong Census & Statistics Department). Such a large number of dwellers living in a small area is quite a fascinating picture. These characteristics differ greatly from old Hong Kong of the pre-World War If era with a population of under a million. To understand the development of Hong Kong and the life of Hong Kong, inhabitants, a wide range of social science research is necessary. However, very few attempts have been made to examine the problems of doing social science research in Hong Kong in any systematic way, or to stimulate the attention of social researchers in Hong Kong (King and Lee, 1984). Similarly, there are fewstudies of the historical development of Hong Kong social science research activities. In this chapter, we present a brief historical review of present- day Hong Kong social science research since World War Il 1.2 Social Science Research in Hong Kong Since World WarlI "Social Science Research’ here is defined as scientific investigation in the social science domain such as the political, social, economic or business dimensions, ete. The research methodology can be qualitative or quantitative in nature. For the sake of convenience, Lee (1975) listed the Rossian reference classification of research organizations into four categories, namely: (a) collegium, where members tend to be of equal status and engage in few concerted research efforts; (®) consortium, which are essentially collections of faculty members each pursuing his own research interests using the research organization to provide administration service and political leverage within the university and with funding agencies; (©) institutes, which arise around the use and maintenance and distribution of scarce resources, access to which has to be regulated in the name of equity; and (@ research firms, which have an elaborate division of labor, hierarchies of authority and status within their professional cadres, and whose personnel do not coincide with departmental structures, The above typology of the structure of research organization can still be applicable to Hong Kong today. First, we focus on the institutes - the educational institutes which are usually believed to conduct researches. In November 1969, a Social Research Centre was founded at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It served as an interdisciplinary research facility to be utilized by social science faculty members who wished to undertake social-scientific studies of Chinese society (Lee, 1975). Apart from this centre, a number of research organizations such as theInstitute of Chinese Studies, the Centre for Communication Studies, the Centre for East Asian Studies, the Geographic Research Centre and the Economic Research Centre were also established in the Chinese University in the 70's. Some of the centres still exist and conduct researches in their specified scope of study, Later, around November 1989, the Centre for Hong Kong Studies and the Centre for Contemporary Asian Studies were established to replace some of the centres in the Chinese University. The Hong Kong Institute of Asia- Pacific Studies (IAPS) came into being on September 1, 1990 as a result of the reorganization and rationalization of the institutional framework then in existence at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in support of social science research (IAPS Annual Report, 1990-1991). The IAPS aims at promoting multi-disciplinary social science research on social, political and economic development, There are several active strategic research programmes in different areas, viz., Gender Research Programs, Hong Kong and Asia-Pacific Economies, Social Indicators and Social Development of Hong Kong, Political Development of Hong Kong, Urban and Regional Development in Pacific Asia, China's Reform and Development, South China Programme and Japan and Asia-Pacific Development ete. Similarly, the University of Hong Kong has the Centre of Asian Studies (CAS) and the Social Sciences Research Centre (SSRC). The CAS was established in November 1967 to provide a focal point for the activities of the University of Hong Kong in the areas of East and Southeast Asia, research assistance to researchers in these fields and with special reference to Hong Kong, and also to support physical and administrative facilities for research, seminars, and conferences dealing with both traditional and modem studies of Asia. The SSRC was set up in June 1987 to promote inter-disciplinary social research. In June 1991, to gear up the centre for rapid development, several units and research programmes were established to develop and coordinate research activities within specific areas. These are the Drug Addiction Research Unit, the Telephone Survey Unit, the Public OpinionProgramme and the Hong Kong Consortium for Social Research Development Programme. The Drug Addiction Research Unit coordinates drug abuse and addictive behaviour research projects and related seminar programmes. The Telephone Survey Unit researches into methodological problems relating to telephone surveys. The areas covered include the effect of different sampling schemes, contact success rate, respondent and interviewer effects, etc... The Public Opinion Programmes gauges public opinions by means of periodic publie opinion polls. Data collected is systematically deposited and can be accessed by academic researchers. On July 1, 1991, The Hong Kong Consortium for Social Research was established to provide extensive archives of social research data in Hong Kong and exchange information with overseas data archives. It is anticipated that this consortium will ultimately be managed by all member institutions because all tertiary institutions will be invited to participate in this development programme. The Department of Applied Social Studies of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (formerly the Hong Kong Polytechnic) is also another active research team on social services. Other institutes, such as the Hong Kong Baptist University (formerly the Hong Kong Baptist College), the City University of Hong Kong (formerly the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong), the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the Hong Kong Lingnan College and the Hong Kong Shue Yan College produce research mainly on an individual basis. In this respect, apart from the two ‘old’ universities, the Chinese University and the University of Hong Kong, the other educational institutes can be classified into the categories of "collegium" or "consortium" 1.3 Social Science Research Methodologies Research methodology is very much subject to individual interest. However, we can say that ‘qualitative! studies are often adopted by the older research professionals, but by no means are the qualitative methods outdated. They mightadopt comparative studies, library research, in- depth interviewing, ethnographic studies or critical hermeneutics ete.; of course, simple but not sophisticated statistical analyses would also be employed in their studies when necessary. There are many studies of this kind. One of the examples of documentary and in-depth interview is Lee M. K. & Ng C. H. (1989) "Class, Family and Social Life in Hong, Kong 1950-1980", Research report of Hong Kong Polytechnic; an example of a comparative study is Martinsons M. G. & Turylo C. (1986) “Information Technology in Business : Hong Kong and Canada", Research report of the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong. Although we cannot assert that quantitative methodolog(ies) should be the ‘ultimate’ standard in scientific research paradigm, like the premises held by the logical positivists around 50's, itis the requirement of precise measurement before any ‘scientific analysis’ can be performed so that an emphasis on quantitative practices and trainings becomes a necessary activity. One may argue that recently there have been some computer software contrived for qualitative data enalysis (for instance, the Nonnumerical Unstructured Data Indexing Searching and Theorizing, NUDIST, published by the La Trobe University in Australia), they no doubt can perform documentary data analysis such as indexing etc., and it is a tool for qualitative data analysis, like the role of statistics in the quantitative research process. On the other hand, it should be emphasized that never is there a rigid and clear demarcation between ‘qualitative’ and ‘quantitative! methodologies in social science research. In fact, they are not mutually exclusive so that they can be adopted together (often this is the actual practice) when this strategy is necessary. (cf. Bryman, 1988) This is what some social science methodologists advocate as ‘methodological pluralism’ - the denial of methodological exclusivism - there does not exist just one proper method for the social sciences (Roth, 1987). [Briefly speaking], qualitative researchers are, for the most part, concerned with evoking the ideas, the feelings, the reactions, the creative potential of people in relation tospecified issues or stimuli or things ... [while the quantitative researchers are used to quantifying] those of them that are regarded as relevant to decision making (Belson, 1986). Referring to the context of Hong Kong, it is reasonable to think that the mega-trend of quantification associates with the rise of ‘precise thinking’ of Hong Kong people. This can be attributable to the rising education level of the general public. This also relates to the rise of the westem scientific culture which is compatible with the industrialized and capitalistic system of Hong Kong. In the wider context of the trend of quantification in the social sciences, within the domain of statistics, Stigler (1986) gives a historical account of the extension of statistics (calculus of probabilities) to the social sciences since the last century. The Victorian physicist Lord Kelvin once criticized nonnumerical knowledge as "meagre and unsatisfactory" (Merton, Shills and Stigler, 1984). This Kelvinian thinking can be deemed as a practical aspect of the living ideology of Hong Kong people nowadays, particularly among young intellectuals who have been instilled with western scientific knowledge. On the other hand, the infrastructure of Hong. Kong is an advanced capitalistic economy which requires the acting individuals in the system to be ‘rational and calculable’, this accounts for the growing of precise thinking. For quantitative research, the sample survey is the usual data collection, mode in which the questionnaire is considered as the ‘golden standard’ measuring instrument. For instance, in 1986 to 1988 and again later, large scale social indicator surveys were conducted in Hong Kong by means of survey questionnaires, These were joint research activities conducted by the IAPS, the SSRC and the Department of Applied Social Studies of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The focus of the surveys is on subjective social indicators, that is, the perceptions, aspirations and degree of satisfaction of Hong Kong, residents in different walks of life. A book was published as a report of these surveys : Lau, $. K., Lee M. K., Wan P. S, & Wong S. L. ed. (1991) Indicators of Social Development - Hong Kong 1988, the Hong Kong Chinese University, HongKong. Similar reports for 1992, 1993 , 1994 and 1995 have been published by the same publisher. Many other studies are currently in progress. 1.4 Research Activities Outside the Educational Institutes 1.4.1 Research Conducted by Government and Voluntary Bodies Outside the educational institutes, there are other organisations engaging in social research such as the Census and Statistics Department of the Hong Kong Government (C&S Dept), the City and New Territories Administration of the Hong Kong Government (CNTA) and the Research Department of the Hong Kong, Council of Social Service. Prof. Siu-lun Wong of the University of Hong Kong, Department of Sociology, (personal communication) indicated that, in retrospect, the Hong Kong Government has begun to understand the importance of opinion polls since the riots in 1967. Large and small scale of surveys have been employed by various government departments for policy-making reference since that year. Mr. Robert, Mitchell was employed by the Hong Kong Government to conduct studies on Hong Kong family life. Censuses and by-censuses have been conducted every decade by the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, as well as other regular monthly surveys such as the General Household Survey (GHS). Due to a stringent field staff situation in the GHS Section and the need to save resources, a ‘split sample’ approach for data collection including both telephone and face-to- face interviewing has been adopted since February 1990. Comparison between these two modes of data collection was performed jointly by the GHS section and the Research Section. The City and New Territories Administration of the Hong Kong Government also takes an active role to carry out surveys to keep updated information about the opinions of Hong Kong citizens. There is a division called the Communication ofInformation Division to undertake this responsibility. Since January 1993, this Division has been using telephone surveys to collect data on the needs and problems of Hong Kong citizens and the opinions towards Government's performance. The data collected are presented in the ‘Report of Opinion Polls’. ‘The main purpose of this database is for intemal reference of the Hong Kong Government but part of the data may be released to the press. Personal communication indicates that recently, these surveys have been conducted on a continuous bimonthly basis and the sampling method is by random selection of telephone numbers from the Chinese language telephone directory. ‘These are examples to show that the Hong Kong Government considers social research to be valuable in formulating policies. As regards the general public, they did not favour and understand what research, meant in the past. The personality of most Chinese, the complicated and delicate political situation in Hong Kong and the increasing crime rates create a reluctance in Hong Kong people to be interviewed (King and Lee, 1984). Nevertheless, with the marked rise in educational level among the younger generation, conducting research in Hong Kong may be 'expected' to be easier than in the past although there is little empirical research to substantiate or disprove this argument. ‘The proportion of the population with secondary or higher education increased from 50% in 1981 to 62% in 1991, while the proportion with tertiary education doubled from 3% to 6% over the same period (Hong Kong 1991 Population Census). By 1994-1995, about 1.2 million students, or 19 per cent of the total population, were in full-time education during the year. Also, 18 per cent of the 17-20 age group could receive tertiary education in Hong Kong in 1995, with 14,500 places available for first- year, first-degree courses (Hong Kong 1996, Ch. 10). These statistics reflect the rise of educational level among the younger population in Hong Kong today. It is reasonable to think that the educated public may be more interested, more cooperative, more sincere and mare able to understand thequestions asked than respondents with less education. Needless to say, the advancement of research methodology and measuring instruments is definitely helpful in this respect. In addition, the political transition of Hong Kong from ‘colonial politics! to ‘returning to China in 1997" is conducive to the rise of a research culture - empirical findings can be viewed as one of the ‘standardized’ gauges to some political disputes, although this is not an universally accepted standard. Different political organizations are likely to conduct opinion polls to get more empirical knowledge to help formulate election strategies as well as to make judgement on some political affairs. However, a coin has two sides, the recognition of the ‘privacy rights’ accompanying with the rise of the educational standard may reverse the situation. It needs further investigations to see the relation between the ‘acceptability of (social) research’, ‘educational attainment of the citizens! and 'the recognition of the privacy rights’. It should be noted that the Law Reform Commission has a subcommittee looking at possible legal protection of privacy rights and a Data Protection Act has been implemented since December 20, 1996. 1.4.2 Commercial and Political Research For the group of "research firms", itis natural to think of the market research companies. The essential role of market research is to support marketing decision making, in understanding markets, identifying opportunities and problems, in taking decisions about the marketing programmes in such areas as products, advertising and pricing, and in controlling the marketing programmes to measure whether the elements achieved their objectives (Steele and Yam, 1988). Some leading research companies in Hong Kong are Survey Research Hong Kong (SRH), Marketing Decision Research Limited (MDR), Marketing Behaviour Limited (MBL), Frank Small and Associates and Asian Marketing Institute (AMI) etc.. Of course, some may have closed and some may have opened since the business world is always in flux. According to the above point of view, it isobvious that marketing research is normally business-oriented, The most common research activities were consumer usage and attitude study, market share analysis, product test and advertising post test (Steele and Yam, 1988). The research practice of Hong Kong research firms is quite different from the United States which accounts for almost 40% of the world market in market research. In fact, Hong Kong is similar to the United Kingdom where the research agency is responsible for submitting proposals and implementing the whole research process including fieldwork, data analysis and report writing with marketing recommendations. However, in the United States, most of the research agencies subcontract data collection and do data processing only. Approximately, 45% in the United States and 35% in the United Kingdom, of research work is commissioned from 'continuous' and ‘syndicated’ services. These are large-scale investigations, In Hong Kong, there are few such services (except SRH), itis estimated that 5% to 20% of the research done by the marketing research firms is of this nature. The majority of services are ‘ad hoc studies’. This phenomenon can be accounted for by the public conception about the role of the marketing research firms and over half of the companies in small size, as about four-fifths of the companies have less than six full-time research staff (Steele and ‘Yam, 1988). It is believed that this phenomenon has not changed much in Hong Kong today. For data collection, the research firms usually adopt the cheapest way to conduct the study as the clients will pay the cost. Telephone interviewing and door-to-door interviews together with group discussion are the normal data collection strategies. But it depends on the budget and the characteristics of the research objectives as it is impossible to, say, show the real object in front of the respondents (although fax images may help in this respect) or let the respondents taste the food via telephoneinterviewing. If the research objective allows, telephone interviewing will usually be the first priority since lower cost and shorter data collection times are favoured by clients, The researchers usually use the Chinese language telephone directory as the sampling frame which has a ‘coverage’ problem and is to be discussed in Chapter Two - Methodological Issues Related to Telephone Surveys and Section 3.5. Marketing Decision Research Limited has done some comparison of door-to- door versus telephone methods for opinion surveys. We have tried hard to contact the company to ask about this study, but they declined to release much information due to business confidentiality. Besides business-oriented activities, the companies may do other types of research, such as opinion polls. For example, AGB McNair conducted a survey on the public opinion on Green Paper on constitutional development in October 1987. Some commentators said that since their findings conflicted with the vocal public's prior expectations, the methodology of the research was criticized. But some believed that it was criticised for being of poor quality. AGB did not make much money from doing the study and the company's reputation was damaged (Steele and Yam, 1989}. Some professionals have suggested that AGB was incorporated into Survey Research Hong Kong because of that event. There are however, some research companies still interested in this kind of work. On October 15, 1992, a poliing survey on Governor Chris Patten's blueprint was conducted by Asian Commercial Research for The Standard newspaper; 663 persons aged 10 and over ‘were interviewed in Cantonese by telephone during the evenings of October 8, 9 and 12, Another example is Hong Kong Polling and Business Research (HKPBR) which was founded in 1988. This research agency adopts telephone interviewing for almost half of its jobs. The Director, Mr. Ching-tin Hung said that telephone imerviewing is an economic and fast data collection mode so that nearly half of the projects of this agency were done by this data collection method if applicable. For instance, two recent studies are done by telephone interviewing; namely, ucomparisons between Chris Patten versus Nan Zhou and comparisons among the nine political parties in Hong Kong. The same sample were asked in these two studies. The sample size was 605 respondents who were selected randomly from the Chinese language residential telephone directory. One more example is the Hong Kong Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood (HKADPL) which commissioned the Information Services Limited to conduct a telephone survey on 'the expectation on the start of the Sino-British Talks’, it adopted a telephone answering machine and computer-assisted technique. However, almost all of this kind of research reports do not usually publish information about the quality of data (for example, validity, reliability and possible survey errors etc.) so that we have to use these figures with special caution. Most research suppliers believe that the market will grow on a steady basis. Current clients will increase their budget and there will be more new users. The growth rate is expected to be from at least 5% to at most 20% per annum. The major growth areas are identified as ‘corporate image studies’, 'service sector - financial and travel’ and ‘social research - opinion poll' (Steele and Yam, 1989), 1.5 Telephone Surveys Most researchers are aware of the limitations of sampling surveys, especially door- to-door surveys which cost a great deal of labour, time and money. Some research practitioners are attempting to use telephone surveys instead of traditional door-to- door. But why telephone surveys? It is easy to understand that telephone surveys have their own distinguishable merits such as sampling telephone numbers are relatively easy and inexpensive, conducting interviews by telephone is quick and economical and telephone lines go where interviewers may fear to tread and reach behind doors that households may fear to open. In adition, locating interviewers in a head office instead of a respondent's living room simplifies administration and make possible entry of interview data dizectly into the computer, and the telephonecan work with a terminal keyboard and screen instead of conventional medium such as pencil-and-paper, this is what we call computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI (for details, see Section 2.4), albeit computer- assisted personal interviewing (CAP!) is possible for door-to-door, and computerized self administered questionnaire (CSAQ) is another alternative. But there are some notable limitations of telephone interviewing, viz., long- recognized biases of limited telephone coverage of the household population, the less-known constraints of using the telephone system as sampling frame and the largely unknown effects of the telephone medium itself on the quality of interview data (Grove and Kahn, 1979). These are the methodological issues related to telephone surveys which will be discussed in detail in Chapter Two. Fortunately, not all of the notable limitations of telephone interviewing are serious in the context of Hong Kong which has very high telephone penetration and details of the telephone coverage in Hong Kong will be presented in Section 2.2.3. Ninety-six percent of the Hong Kong people speak Cantonese while only one-third of the population self-report that they could speak English (Hong Kong 1991 Population Census). The English language barrier is not a hindrance to computer- assisted telephone interviewing since Chinese language computers can tackle this problem, although there remains the problem of the speed of data-keying. Another problem remains is what to do with respondents who speak neither English nor Cantonese, say, Hakka dialect or Mandarin. We may arrange some interviewers who can speak the dialect or the language that is suitable for the respondents. The unexamined methodological problems of telephone interviewing in Hong Kong are mainly concerned with the sampling and non- sampling errors, this is why this thesis focuses on the problems of the accuracy of the telephone interviewing conducted in Hong Kong. We attempt to put this research area in a Total Survey Design (TSD) perspective 131.6 The Structure of the Thesis As honest’ social science researchers, itis the right time for us to put efforts into studying the accuracy of telephone surveys in Hong Kong. In what follows, we are going to present and discuss some important methodological issues in telephone surveys. In Chapter Two, we will discuss the methodological issues related to telephone surveys, such as sampling coverage, sample design, the feasibility of conducting computer-assisted telephone interviewing in Hong Kong. In Chapter Three, telephone survey errors and survey costs will be investigated. This is unsatisfactory if talking about ‘error! without referring to ‘survey cost’ so a review of cost models will also be presented. Of all types of survey errors, we will focus on interviewer error. Statistical modeling of interviewer variability and explanations for interviewer effects will be presented in Chapter Four. Based on some published data from journals and the Social Science Research Centre of the University of Hong Kong, in Chapter Five, Bayesian modeling of interviewer effects will be attempted. In this respect, we will be using the software BUGS. Discussion and future work will also be suggested in Chapter Six. 4Chapter TWO : Methodological Issues Related to Telephone Surveys 2.1 Introduction ‘This chapter will focus on some important features of telephone survey methodology. As reported by Massey er al (1982), there are six major methodological issues relating to telephone survey methods; namely, costs, response rate, coverage, interview medium bias, computer-assisted telephone interviews (CAT!) and dual frame. Except for costs and CATI, the rest are in the domain of survey errors. According to the classification proposed by Groves (1989), response rate (nonresponse), coverage and dual frame are errors of nonobservation while interview medium bias is a kind of observational error, Costs and errors are two intermingled aspects in the analysis of survey costs and survey errors. We try to follow the path of Groves’ idea to put costs and errors in an unified perspective. In addition, when we study the sources of survey errors, we try to take the Kish-Andersen-Groves conception of 'total survey error’ (TSE) which includes almost all sources of possible errors, not just sampling errors as is ‘common in survey literature, These will be studied in detail in Chapter Three. As an initial visit to telephone survey methodology, we summarise some key points of the above-mentioned methodological issues reported by Messay et al in 1982, although the results may not all be applicable in Hong Kong today: (a) Costs: (@) Most telephone data collection methods cost between 40 to 60 percent of comparable face-to-face data collection methods (b) To incozporate telephone data collection into ongoing survey activities efficiently it is important to be able to itemize every phase of the telephone survey activities as well as the ongoing activities and to separate fixed costs from variable costs. 1s(©) The development of cost models is essential for evaluating the efficiency of telephone surveys. (2) RESPONSE RATE: (a) Preliminary evidence suggests the Census Bureau of the US can get high RDD response rates, (b) The research should focus on the factors effecting both the initial response rate and the later callbacks to convert initial refusals to completed interviews. (©) A critical question on response rates is whether high levels of response can be maintained in telephone panel surveys. (@) A concer in national surveys is the potential for different response rates among smaller domains of the population. (3) COVERAGE : (a) The characteristics of persons in households without telephones is quite ifferent from persons in households with telephones with respect to their demographic and health characteristics. (©) Current methods to reduce bias due to coverage problems adjust the random digit dialing (RDD) telephone estimates to known demographic distributions of the population or use a dual telephone and face-to-face survey to improve the coverage of household in the United States population to approximately 95 percent. (4) INTERVIEW MEDIUM BIAS : (@) Although the differences were often not large, there was a consistent pattern of more reporting of health events by telephone respondents over most demographic domains. (b) In an experiment conducted by National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Monsees and Massey in 1979 found considerabie differences in the reporting of income in a telephone survey when compared to the face-to-face ‘National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). 16(©) The experiment further indicated that unusually lengthy questions present special problems for a telephone survey but more research is needed in this respect. (5) COMPUTER-ASSISTED TELEPHONE INTERVIEWINGS (CATD : (a) In the study by the Survey Research Center (SRC) at Michigan, the comparison between a CATT interview and non-CATI interview (hard copy questionnaire) produced very few differences in response rates, response differences, and costs. (b) There was some evidence that the interviewer variability is somewhat less for the CATI interview. (©) If differences are found when comparing CATI to non-CATI data care must be taken when attributing differences to CATI versus non-CATI to the extent that these differences may be, in part, caused by the different instruments. That is to say, the effect may be confounding. (6) DUAL FRAME (a) The possibility of using a dual frame telephone and face-to-face survey has already been mentioned as a means to reduce the coverage bias associated with a telephone survey. (b) More research on sample design issues, administrative issues, development Of questionnaires and estimators and the question of associated survey cost are needed. ‘The above summary lets us have a background conception of telephone survey methodology. In the coming sections, we are going to discuss the issues in a similar manner with reference to the situation of Hong Kong. We will first consider the coverage of the household population by telephones in Hong Kong. This is an essential feature to gauge the quality of data collected by telephone surveys. Second, several sampling schemes particularly contrived for telephone surveys will be introduced. After comparing their feasibility for appiication in WwHong Kong, we see that although the telephone-directory-based sampling should be the most suitable strategy for Hong Kong situation (to a certain extent, this argument has already been empirically substantiated, see Chan, 1991), this has fo be reconsidered because the telephone directory may be about to disappear in one day if the publishers think that it is costly and can be substituted by other means, for instance the on-line CDROM. Thus, we will include a more lengthy discussion on other sampling schemes in order to search for a better one. Third, since the rapid development of and the easy access to computer technology, computer- assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) will be mentioned. Although Hong Kong is one of the advanced societies in the world, CATI as an interviewing mode has not yet become a popular strategy. We propose some explanations of this, situation. Fourth, a ‘callback mode!’ proposed by Potthoff et al (1993) dealing with nonavailability bias in (telephone) surveys will be presented. In Chapter Three, the theoretical considerations of data quality in telephone surveys will be presented. Survey costs and survey errors are equally emphasized. In this respect, observational as well as nonobservational errors are discussed; however, due to personal interest and the availability of data, observational errors (interviewer effects) is stressed. Empirical illustrations of interviewer effects will also be performed by several computational tools. 2.2 The Coverage of Household Population by Telephones in Hong Kong 2.2.1 Introduetion The notorious example of telephone surveys is the case of the Literary Digest Survey based on telephone directory listings that predicted a landslide victory for Landon over Roosevelt in the 1936 United States presidential election. Katz and Cantril (1937) considered that noncoverage of the population by telephone was an important reason for the erroneous prediction. Nevertheless, the relative lower cost of data collection and efficiency of telephone surveys still attract researchers toadopt it in a number of surveys. In Chapter One, we have mentioned that in Hong Kong many research agencies adopt telephone interviewing as one of the common strategies for data collection. The Government also has tried to use telephone interviews as one of the modes of data collection besides treating it only as « follow-up instrument. The ever growing of the use of telephone interviews provokes the research methodologists to assess its reliability and validity. "Good" coverage of the population by telephone is one of the necessary conditions for a proper application of telephone interviews. Thus, we take a look at telephone coverage in Hong Kong. For a clear exposition, some useful concepts and definitions in telephone surveys are listed below. 2.2.2 Concepts and Definitions In telephone surveys, there are some key terms that we have to define clearly. We adopt the definitions proposed by Massey (1988): (@) telephone households refers to the households with telephones. (b) noncoverage refers to the households missing from a telephone survey sampling frame. The elements included in noncoverage are nontelephone households and telephone households which are omitted from the telephone sampling frame. (Ocoverage rate is defined as the percent of all households included in the telephone sampling frame. This rate may vary according to the characteristics of the population being discussed. (@) undercoverage refers to the number of persons in telephone households who are not enumerated in sample households in a telephone survey. (©) telephone access refers to households that can be reached by telephone, including those that do not have a telephone in their dwelling unit. (B noncoverage bias is defined as the difference between the expected value of a given characteristic for the covered telephone survey population and the expected value of the characteristic for the total household population.2.2.3 Telephone Coverage in Hong Kong : For all types of surveys, a complete sampling frame is an important element for an adequate sample. The completeness of a sampling frame based upon telephone lines can be reflected by the coverage rate of telephones in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Telecom Limited in 1995 reported that with 3,149,280 (total exchange lines in service) telephone lines installed, Hong Kong has an enviable penetration rate - more than one telephone line for every two people in the territory, each backed by all the benefits that only a fully digital system can provide. Moze than 18,000 kilometres of new fibre optic cable were added by Hong Kong Telecom Limited in 1995, bringing the territory's total to 78,780 kilometres. Hong Kong is thus renowned for high telephone penetration. The penetration rate of telephones was estimated as 99.3 percent in 1995 (see Table 2 listed below). The Hong Kong Telecom Limited in 1993 claimed that undoubtedly Hong Kong already has one of the highest telephone penetration rates in the world and there continues to be a strong growth in the local market. The Hong Kong Telecom Limited in 1995 reported that their mobile telephone business saw a year of outstanding growth. An additional 76,000 digital mobile customers brought their total to 162,000 and their market share to an industry-leading 34 percent (equivalent to nearly 7.6 percent of the total population at the end of 1995). The Hong Kong Telecom Limited anticipates growth of exchange lines in Hong Kong to continue at more than 5 percent a year and they aim at by the year 2000 Hong Kong will be one of the areas of having dense penetration of telephone lines in Asia. As at April 1996, there are over 3.2 million of exchange lines in service in Hong Kong and of which nearly 2.0 million lines were residential, the proportion of residential lines in service was thus about 60.4 percent, the growth rate in residential exchange lines from April 1995 to ‘April 1996 was approximately 3.1 percent. These figures can be found in the Hong Kong Monthly Digest of Statistics (July 1996), Census & Statistics 20Department, Hong Kong. The following tables present some statistics which reflect a profile of the telephone service in Hong Kong. ‘Table 1: TEN-YEAR STATISTICAL REVIEW (Year Ended 31-3-1995) Customer Statistics Year] A B Cc [D@) [HO] F |G 1986 | 2003 [7303 | 1,764 739 | 53 | 2388 43.0 1987_| 2,096 | 1,364 | 1,877 | 727 | 4.7_| 2,507 | 453] 1988] 2,227 | 1.430 | 2,021 | 708 | 48 | 2,708 | 3 1989 2,397 | 1,503) 2,191 | 686 | 51 | 2,944] 513 1990 | 2,520 | 1,578 | 2,345 | 673 | 50 | 357 | 343 1991 [2,730 | 1641 | 2,475 | 663 | 40 | 3314 | S71 1992 [2,841 | 1,704 | 2,642 | 645 | 3.8 13,509 | 61.0 1993 [3,027 | 1,759 | 2,820 | 24 | 32 | 3,604 | 03.6 1994-[3,175 | 1,829 | 2,992 | 611 | 40 | 3,899 | 659 1995 [3,295 | 1,897 | 3,149 | 602 | 3.7 | 4,094 | 666 “Soares > Figures are exacted rom Hong Kong Telecom Arnal Report 1993, 2.58. Explanatory Notes . Columns A, B, C & F are presented in rounded thousands 2. A= Exchange Capacity (including direct dialing in lines, faxlines and datel lines) 3. B = Exchange Lines in Residential Service 4, C= Total Exchange Lines in Service 5. ‘roportion of residential lines in service = B/C 6. E = Growth in Exchange Lines in Residential Service 7. F = Telephones in Service (estimated figures only) 8. G = Telephones per 100 population Table 2 : The Ratio of Number of Working Residential Lines (#WRL) er Total Permanent Living Quarter (TPLQ) Asa Encorad | AWREOT] TPQ] Ratio Quofine Year | 000) | 000) _| (%) 1988 14860 [1562.0 [95.15 1989 1.5540 [1,629.5 | 95.37 1990 7,626.0 [1,710.5 | 95.06 1931 1.6960 | 1,758.8 | 9643, 1992 1,760.0 [1,825.6 [96.41 1993 1835.0 | 1,8800 [97.61 199 1,9080 [1,921.7 [99.29 1995 1,966.0 [1979-7 | 99.31 ~Seatee Hong Korg Monthly Digest of Sater Octber 1994 and July 1996), Table 31 (Stock of Permanent Living Quarters) and 615 (Telecommunications Services), Census and States Desarmen, Hong Kong, 21Explanatory Notes : 1. The figures are at the end of the year so that these figures includes three more months (October to December) comparing to the figures of TPLQ. As observed from other similar data in the book, the contribution from October to December is usually below 10,000 units. 2. Ratio in percent = #WRL/TPLQ (It should be noted that some of the living quarters may be unoccupied so that the ratio computed should be larger if taking away the number of the unoccupied living quarters). The definition of TPLQ employed here is rather crude. First, it does exclude the temporary Housing (although they are about to be vanished) but include the ineligible living quarters. If we take away the “ineligible living quarters” such as “waiting for demolished” and “unoccupied” ete., then the ratio is estimated to be over 100%, 3. From the ratios listed in the fourth column, the number of working telephone lines per each permanent living quarter is nearly one. It means that on the average, there is nearly one telephone line used per each permanent living quarter if the assumption of uniform distribution of number of telephone lines is robust. ‘According to the Table 1, we see that there has been an obvious increase in the demand for telephone service in Hong Kong in 1986 to 1995. The number of residential exchange lines has increased by 45.6 percent in the decade. The "penetration rate" of residential lines can be reflected by the ratios presented in ‘Table 2 where nearly 100 percent has been attained since 1994, Due to the fact of high telephone coverage in Hong Kong, we can rely on the telephone lines as sampling listings for survey although high telephone coverage does not logically imply uniform distribution of telephones over the population. Noncoverage bias of telephone should not be a problem in the situation of Hong Kong if the distribution of telephone lines is nearly uniform over all types of household. To answer this, question more affirmatively, requires knowledge of the degree of telephone subscription among minority social groups such as single elderly inhabitants and poor families, and also the degree of multiple telephone lines. We know that the Hong Kong Telecom Limited continues to operate the line-a-day free phone for the elderly living on their own, this should increase the likelihood of uniform distribution of residential lines. Also, wealthy families will tend to use extra lines 2for fax and portable telephone rather than a second domestic line. To a certain extent, these should reduce the problem of multiple telephone lines in the same household. ‘There are several reasons that account for Hong Kong's high coverage of telephones. Economically, local calls are free in Hong Kong, only a flat rate for each quarter is requested for each subscription. As at September 1996, the monthly subscription rate of a residential line is only HK$67, an amount which cannot even buy an average dinner in restaurant for two persons. In 1993, the Hong Kong Telecom Limited guarantees that in future, the local charges will, on average, always be 4 percent less than the rate of inflation. In addition, the installation fee for a residential telephone line is just HK$530, we see that the cost of installation of a telephone and receiving telephone services are relatively low compared with other regions in the world such as Taiwan, Vietnam and Singapore in Asia and the United States in the west (in 1996, the installation fee for a residential telephone line in urban areas in Taiwan is NT3,000 » HK$705 and the charge of services is on the basis of call minute and distance; for example, 0-40 kilometer and 1 minute in peak time is NT2.5 + HK $0.58, NT1.4 = HK$0.33 in evening and NT0.8 » HK$0.19 in mid-night. In Vietnam, the installation of residential telephone line in Hanoi (Capital City of Vietnam) is ‘VNDongl,700,000.00 (about $US160.00) and the monthly charges is about $US7.00. In Singapore, the setup cost for a residential telephone line is around Sing$ 20-30 (about US$10-15). It seems that it is cheaper than in Hong Kong. However there is an extra charges for modem users (this is not the case in Hong Kong). Although the fixed monthly charges is about US$5, one would have to 23pay for ‘usage time’ (the charges plan is not as simple as in Hong Kong). In the United States, each area and city in different states will have their own rates, For instance, in Seattle, it will be US$40 for first subscription of service, but if there has no preinstalled line then an extra US820 will be added. About service charges, it varies a lot depending on different conditions, For example, there are some special plans in Davis in California for low income family whose service charges can be USS4.5, but a low income family may pay USS10 in Seattle, In addition, there are some plans like if you only make 30 calls a month, you can pay lesser. Therfore there are multiple plans for service charges in the US. Ina nutshell, Hong Kong has been implementing a simple and cheap payment schemes. This is definitely conducive for high penetration rate. However, we know that the telephone services providers are about to change the payement scheme. This is worth noting the future development.) Physically speaking, Hong Kong is very densely populated in such a small space, so the cost for construction of telephone networks can be less, helping to lower the cost of telephone subscription. Indirectly, it contributes a positive economic factor to high telephone coverage. Besides, Hong Kong life is extremely busy which is conducive to Hong Kong people to perceive the need for fast communications, and a telephone is essential for this purpose. Accordingly, Trewin and Lee (1988) classified that ninety percent or greater in telephone coverage rate belongs to Class I. We see that Hong Kong belongs to Class I as the penetration rate is nearly 100%, Telephone surveys are going to be of most interest to countries in the first ‘two classes (Class II is between 80 - 89 percent). It justifies adopting telephone interviewing in Hong Kong if we consider coverage only. But which kind of sampling method and sampling frame should be used? Telephone directory, Random Digit Dialing, Mitofsky-Waksberg Sampling, Dual Frame Approach, orwhat else? In the coming sections, sampling methods for telephone surveys are presented and discussed. 2.3 Probabilistic Telephone Sampling Methods 2.3.1 Introduction This section presents the available probabilistic telephone sampling methods. There are four popular telephone sampling methods which have been adopted in the United States and other countries, namely, Directory Sampling, Random Digit Dialing (RDD), List Assisted and Multiple Frame Sampling. These four sampling strategies are in no sense exhaustive and exclusive so that they can be combined together if necessary and applicable. It must be noted that the evolution of telephone sampling design has expanded the range of designs in use rather than selected a single all-purpose design. We will put the discussion of the availability of telephone sampling methods in the context of Hong Kong where telephone interviewing is only in its infancy compared with other developed societies such as the United States. 2.3.2 Types of Probabilistic Telephone Sampling Methods We may classify Directory Sampling as Type-I Sampling which includes directory based sampling and commercial- list sampling. Type-J1 Sampling consists of random-digit- dialing and related samplings, and list-assisted and multiple frame sampling is classified as Type-III Sampling. It is a common problem that representativeness and sampling cost are both adversely affected by the imperfections in the frame because the sampling frame determines the coverage of telephone households and it may provide auxiliary information that can be used to reduce nonresponse. Type-I sampling is much affected by the quality of the frame while Type-II sampling is computer- assisted and is thought to be statistically sound. Type- III sampling takes a synthetic approach which combines the strengths of Type-I and Type-II sampling schemes. However, both the 25representativeness and sampling cost of Type-II and Type-III samplings are expectedly higher than in 1 ppe-I sampling. 2.3.3 Type-I Sampling - Directory Sampling : There are two directory samplings, one is based on the frame of the directories of telephone subscribers and the another one is referred to the commercial lists derived from other sources. Whichever frame is used, all frames are subject to deficiencies; namely, (® ineligible listings - for which there is no telephone household assigned toa frame element, (i) duplicate listings - for which there are owo or more frame elements that identify the same telephone household, and (iii) noncoverage - for which telephone households in the population do not have any frame element which can identify them. Examples of ineligible listings are discontinued service subscribers, business or other units that are not households. Fortunately, Hong Kong Telephone Company separates the directories according to residential and nonresidential, so this separation can decrease the frequency of ineligible listings. According to the data presented in section 2.2, itis expected that for most households in Hong Kong, only one telephone line is subscribed in one household (household is defined as a domestic household consists of a group of persons who live together and make common provision for essentials for living. These persons need not be related.) If ‘we can know the condition of multiple lines, then we can also be clear how serious is the problem of duplicate listings because itis believed that they are associated. However, the noncoverage problem which includes the failure of covering the unlisted or unpublished telephone households, who pay to suppress their listings and those subscribing after publication of the directory may still need investigation. ‘We think that the unlisted group is most likely the ‘protected persons’ or the so- 26called VIPs and the popular people such as some political activists and movie stars, but it is reasonable to think that the proportion of the unlisted group should not be very large. Because of business confidentiality, the Hong Kong Telecom Limited refuses to release this information although we have tried hard fo request them. One suggestion is to compare the number of entries in directory versus the number of working domestic lines. Taking the telephone directory of the New Territories Section 1997 as a reference frame (because most Hong Kong inhabitants have been living there since the last decade, ef. Section 1.1 ), the total number of entries are estimated as 822,052 and 648,540 for the English and Chinese versions respectively. Since there are most pages having 476 entries/page for the English version (total pages = 1,727) whereas 540 entries/page for the Chinese verson (total pages = 1,201). The total residential exchange lines in services for the New Territories in 1997 are approximately estimated as 865,320 (Hong Kong Telecom Annual Report 1996), and accordingly the unlisted numbers is about 5% in the English version but 25% in the Chinese version. Anyway, it needs further study on the characteristics of the unlisted group in Hong Kong so that we can assess the bias due to this source. It should be noted that the size of the bias depends on both the size of the difference between listed and unlisted household characteristics and the size of the proportion not covered. The noncoverage rate, however, may vary across population characteristics. Hong Kong Telecom Limited, for the sake of meeting the needs of telephone users, separates the telephone directories of Hong Kong into four types, These directories have different coverage areas. Residential directories are white page directories containing only residential entries comprising subscriber's name, abridged address and telephone number. The listings are in alphabetical order for English version while for the Chinese directories the listings are according to the number of strokes of the Chinese surname of the subscribers, Each version is available for different ‘geographic areas : Hong Kong and Outlying Islands, Kowloon and Sai Kung, and athe New Territories. Business telephone directories are also white page directories which contain business entries for the entire Hong Kong Territories. Individual Chinese and English directories are available. Any amendments in the white page directories have to be processed before 15 July each year. The other two nonresidential directories are the yellow page commercial/industrial guides. These are guides for products and services of interests to everyone. Leuthold and Scheele (1971) stated that the 'isolation- integration’ dimension could account for a significant proportion of homes without telephone and unlisted telephoners. Isolates include not only people living in rural areas but also people who are recent arrivals in the community, people who do not read mass media, people who live alone, and people who do not vote or participate in community affairs. In Hong Kong, the effect of rural areas has diminished. ‘The number of legal immigrants from China is fixed by a ‘one-way permit quota’ at 150 a day from July 1, 1995 (during 1995, 45,986 Chinese residents came to settle in Hong Kong and this number equals 28,96% of the total population growth in the year) while the daily average amest figures of illegal immigrants for 1994 and 1995 were 86 and 73 respectively. In 1995, only 460 Vietnamese migrants arrived in Hong Kong. The corresponding figure for 1994 was 363 (Hong Kong 1996). These figures imply that number of immigrants is quite significant in Hong Kong Hence, a further research on ‘immigrants versus nontelephoners' is worthwhile. ‘The rest of the isolates do not seemingly associate significantly with no telephone or unlisted. Leuthold and Scheele (1971) found that in the United States both income and isolation contributed to telephone possession, although income appeared to exert the greater influence and the incidence of unlisted numbers showed no correlation with income or occupation. As stated in Section 2.2.5, the subscription fee of a residential telephone line in Hong Kong is cheap enough so that nearly every household can afford it. Thus, all levels of income earners ought 28to be able to subscribe to a telephone line (the median monthly household income in 1991 was HK$9,964 according to Hong Kong 1991 Population Census). Tis reasonable to think that most of the residential telephone subscribers’ entries are included in the telephone directories, particularly in the English directory because ithas been common practice that all subscribers are ‘automatically’ registered in the English directory (unless they choose to be ex-directory) but not the case in the Chinese directory. On the basis of coverage proportions stated in the preceding paragraph , we estimate that around 95% of the residential numbers are listed in the English directory but only about 75% are in the Chinese directory. Thus, the potential bias in samples based on the English telephone directory is expected to be smalier in the case of Hong Kong. In spite of the limited auxiliary information provided by the telephone directories and the expense of reordering the lists, stratification or other controls cannot be used effectively, other than pethaps stratified sampling according to the exchange prefix allowing differential response rates and ex-directory rates can be assessed. Of course, once the data have been computerised as an electronic database, then stratification should not be a problem. However, other types of sampling techniques can be applied. There are three ‘basic! types of sampling techniques that could be adopted : @ simple random selection of directory lines, i) systematic sampling of directory lines selected from the alphabetically ordered lists, and (iii) cluster selection of all households identified by a block of selected lines or by page. is increasing efficiency but decreasing The advantage of using from (i) to simplicity in statistical analysis. Of course, these techniques can be applied together whenever necessary and applicable but at the expense of creating complex survey analysis. 29Directory sampling can be obtained at low or no cost, but the clerical cost of selecting listings from a directory has to be considered. There are a few commercial lists available in Hong Kong, but we will present briefly the case in the United States. Two types of commercial frames based on telephone directories are city directories and master address lists. These lists are modified from the telephone directories for the sake of enhancing their utilities for commercial purposes. City directories are printed address listings fora city with a telephone number for every address obtained from a directory or from household canvassing. Master address lists are nationwide in extent and are machine readable, greatly facilitating selection of widespread or geographically specified populations (Lepkowski, 1988). Master address lists are usually geographically and socio- economically classified to facilitate stratified selection and selection of some specified populations. Coverage deficiencies of commercial lists are similar to those of directories, in particular, ineligible listings are more common in master address lists since the updating process may need time, The obvious advantage of commercial list directory based sampling is convenience, especially for the nonexpert researchers, but the disadvantages are the selection operations are out of direct control and the cost for purchasing the services may be high. 2.3.4 Type-II Sampling - Computer-Assisted Sampling Type-II samplings are computer-assisted sampling techniques. The protocol type is Random-Digit-Dialing (RDD) which is based on the frame of all possible telephone numbers. In this respect, the noncoverage deficiency of the frame can be eliminated but the ineligible and duplicate deficiencies remain. We may categorize random digit dialing sampling methods into two categories, namely, () naive RDD sampling and ii) sophisticated RDD sampling. ‘We will discuss these sampling methods with reference to Hong Kong in the following sections. 30‘There are numerous papers conceming RDD and some of the remarkable results are reviewed in this section. Justifications for the implementation of RDD methods in telephone surveys can be cited as below : (a) Findings suggest that RDD is an operationally efficient sampling technique, both in terms of cost and time in implementation; also, it seems safe to conclude that random digit dialing is at least as accurate as the best alternative survey methods (Tull and Album, 1977; Klecka and Tuchfarber, 1978; Cummings, 1979; Orwin and Boruch, 1982). (b) In the context where every household has a telephone and where the structure of telephone prefixal codes is simple (italics are mine), itis always worthwhile to adopt the random digit dialing procedure in a telephone survey especially when the extra cost involved is not likely to be high (Tee, 1989). (¢) Modified random digit dialing methods may be used to obtain information at household or individual level for special populations (Hauck and Cox, 1974; Blair and Czaja, 1982; Greenberg, 1990). The following notes contain some cautions when implementing telephone surveys in general and RDD in particular: (@A telephone sample comprises a sample of households, not persons, therefore a weight should be superimposed on the response (Waksberg, 1978). The weight is the number of the target respondents in the household, for instance, the number of household members whose age are over 18. If the survey is interested in household characteristics rather than personal items, the weight can be omitted. (e) To have unbiased estimation, a weight equal to the inverse of the aumber of distinct telephone lines within the same household should be applied to the chance of selection. 31(B) Verification of ‘no answer" is essential since we cannot definitely know the status of the telephone dialed whether it be a residential line or not when ringing without answer. On the other hand, itis interesting to model the optimal number of rings before hanging up the call and the optimal number of calls before forsaking the number dialed. Hence, two useful models can be constructed, Initially, we suspect thet the geometric probability model may be fitted as ‘The likelihoods in these random processes, that is, (x|p) = p(1-p)¥ for x = 0, 1, 2, ... and zero elsewhere, where X be the number of rings until the telephone answered or the number of calls until the telephone contacted and P (0 0), optimum sample sizes with repeated surveys and reduction in cost with interpretation: 36First, we list the notations as below: M-=number of prefix areas in the population (in Waksberg's analysis, the prefix areas includes the first eight digits of the 10-digit telephone numbering system), m = number of sample prefix areas desired, k+l = cluster size in sample, n= total sample size of residential numbers = m(k+1), p= intraclass correlation within prefix areas, number of residential numbers in ith prefix area, x = Z)Pi/(KM), ie., the proportion of residential numbers in the population, kM = number of residential units in the population, proportion of prefix areas with no residential numbers, o*(X) = sampling variance of statistic being estimated, o* = population variance for statistics, s = number of surveys to be carried out with the sample design, Cu= cost of an unproductive call, ic., to a nonresidential number, Cp = cost of a productive call; includes both interviewing and processing costs. Cluster Sampling with PPS and with Some Prefix Areas Having No Residential ‘Telephone Numbers (that is, Some P, = 0 and t> 0) By assuming in the remaining (1-1)M areas, Pj > k#1, the expected total calls will be the sum of the expected number of calls to select a sample of m prefix areas with Pj > O and the expected number of calls within the selected areas, ie., E(total calls) = mn" + B;{100k mP\(100 Pj wM)"}, where i= 1 to (1-tM = (mm")[1+(1-k] (1) The associated expected cost is given by, 37CH m(k+1)Cp + {mm [L+(1-k]-m(k+1)}Cu = m(k+1)[Cp+(1-n-)Cun"] + mtCun —- (2) All variables in the expression are positive real numbers so that x < I-t. By introducing the sampling variance of statistic being estimated, 6°(X) = 0°(1+pk)[m(k+1)]", where p is the intraclass correlation within clusters (or the measure of homogeneity of the cluster using Hansen, Hurwitz and Madow's term), and expressing the expected cost as C= mC+mnC” where n=k +1 (3) Cl=tCwn ~ (4) and C"'= Cp + (1-t-t)Cu/ — (5), then the optimal values of m and k (and hence n) can be determined for a single survey. To determine the optimal values of m and k is to minimize the function F = 0%(X) + Mme! + ma C"-C) -~ (6) where 4 is the Lagrangian multiplier. Using partial differentiation to (6) with respect to m and nand setting the differentials to zero, we get dF/6m=-o'[l-ptpn|mtay! +AC+n C= 8F/5n =o%p(mny" - o[1-p+pnj(ma)? + AmC" Solving for 2 in (7) and substituting into (8), we can solve for CC" ~p)/p], that is, optimum n = optimum (k+1) x(Cp+ - oot 2) Pe ~ (wretca Pp | ® 38Comparing cluster sampling with simple random sampling (srs) with replacement or sts in an infinite population (so that the finite correction factor can be ignored), if the cluster sampling is more efficient, the sufficient condition is p <0 (but this is an unlikely outcome). If p= , cluster sampling and simple random sampling are equally good while cluster sampling is worse than simple random sampling when 0

= the number of PSU's in the population = the set of all PSU's in the population, where I = {1,2,3,...M} m= the number of PSU's in the sample which is randomly selected with replacement = the set of all sampled PSU's, i= (1,2,3,..m} N = the number of phone numbers contained in each PSU (usually taken as 100) P| =the proportion of auspicious phone numbers in the I* PSU PT the proportion of residential phone numbers in the I" PSU P =(2P))/Mand P* =(5P*; YM M'= the number of PSU's in the population that contain no auspicious phone numbers L = MYM = the proportion of PSU's with Pj = 0 Expected Numbers of Phone Numbers Dialed For the first stage, the total number of phone numbers dialed is fixed and is equal tome. Then the expected number of auspicious phone numbers dialed in the first stage is P me and the expected number of residential numbers is P * me. In the second stage, the expected numbers of phone numbers dialed is equal to (1-L)mke for total phone numbers, p~ mn for auspicious numbers and P* mke for residential numbers. On dividing these two results by (1-L)mke, P /(1-L) is the fraction of auspicious phone numbers and P * /(1-L) is the fraction for residential numbers. Note that these fractions are independent of c but are sensitive to the definition of an auspicious phone number. 2Distribution of the Proportion Auspicious If the distribution of the proportions of auspicious numbers is known, we can make a better choice for the value of c and the definition of an auspicious phone number. Let X denote the number of auspicious phone numbers found among the ¢ numbers that are dialed in a PSU and P be the proportion of phone numbers in a PSU that are auspicious and assume that the prior distribution of P, h(p), is a Beta distribution with o: and B be its parameters and the likelihood, h(x | p) is a Binomial distribution. That is, P ~ Beta(cr,8) for 0

4 and the results of the first stage of sampling are already available, a Pearson's X? of goodness of fit test with degrees of freedom (c-3) can be used to testing degree of fit for h(x). Potthoff used the data gathered by Valley Forge Information Service in March 1983, he obtained a Pearson X*-value of 0.04 with 1-df indicating the Beta distribution of h(p) cam be retained. On the other hand, the density of p for Type I PSU is given by the conditional density h(p|x = 1) which equals to (1- L)h(x = 1| p)h(p)/h(x = 1) and this is also a Beta distribution 43with parameters (a-+1) and (B+ -1), so that the conditional mean of p given x, o and B is E@ |x = 1,0,8) = (a-+1)/(a-+8+c) and the conditional variance is Var(P |x = 1,01,8) (o+1)(B-1+c) {(a+B+c}(a+P+1+c)}" Note that after a certain value of ¢ when ct and B is fixed, the conditional variance decreases as ¢ rises, as we see that there is a particular c* which gives the maximum value of the conditional variance and c* is given by the root of a quadratic equation and the only root is (-Ge+g)+ Ges)" Sef +2eg—Fg)}/4 where e=B-1, g=atB+l and £=a+f. It may be interpreted that a higher value of c associates with a lower value of the conditional variance, that is, a higher value of the precision, It is a favourable effect that in the first- stage dialing, a higher value of ¢ will lead both to improved chances of detecting errors and to less serious consequences of undetected errors (Potthoff, 1987a). Although the survey cost incurred is higher when ¢ rises, there is a trade-off, but this is often a favourable one. Apart from the value of e, the definition of an auspicious phone number also has effect on the survey cost. [Potthoff suggested that] the definition should be such that, if one were to process the same phone number twice for classification as auspicious or inauspicious, the classification would be the same on both occasions. Failure to observe this last criterion will cause the probability structure of the model to be violated (Potthoff, 19872). This criteria are in fact the criteria of "unambiguity' and ‘consistency! In sum, despite the high coverage of complete residential telephone numbers, random digit dialing methods appear to be more expensive to implement than directory-based samplings. Two-stage procedures suffer losses in precision due to clustered sample selection. Other altematives can be used instead of Class-I and Class-II Samplings, they are referred as synthetic approaches.2.3.5 Type-I1I Sampling - Synthetic Approach ‘Two examples of Synthetic Approach are list-assisted and dual frame samplings which are thought to have the complementary strengths of the directory-based and random digit dialing methods. Plus d-digit sampling is a list-assisted procedure in which a sample is selected from a directory and an integer is added to the last d digits of the selected numbers. 'd’ is usually selected as'I' or "2 for practical implementation. This sampling procedure includes both listed and unlisted telephone numbers and it therefore yields a higher proportion of productive calls than the random digit dialing design. However, the plus d-digit approach meets some theoretical problems such as in order to achieve nonzero chance of selection for unlisted numbers, it must be assumed that unlisted numbers are evenly mixed among listed numbers, but this essumption is hard to verify. Even granted this assumption, the probabilities of selection of telephone households are likely to be unequal because the samples are drawn from a directory which may have frame deficiencies. The remedy for this theoretical drawback can be by replacement of the last d digits by random selection. But as d increases, the proportion of productive calls also decreases since it is approximate to the naive random digit dialing method. On the other hand, we may stratify the prefix areas of the telephone numbers according to the auxiliary information provided by the commercial list, then random digit dialing design is applied by stratum to stratum. This approach may be referred as list-assisted sampling based on telephone number samples. We have mentioned that there are at least some commercial lists available in Hong Kong so that this approach may be applicable. However, the quality of this kind of lists may not be known since the providers usually do not release the information about the data quality, so the quality of the frame lists is out of the control of the users. Another 45alternative is the dual frame sampling which selects samples from a directory ot commercial list frame, and simultaneously an random digit dialing sample is selected from the frame of all possible telephone numbers. Numbers are called in both samples and interviews are attempted in all telephone households. It should be noted that a special estimator of the mean of a characteristic is constructed and this estimator is composed of two parts : total domain estimate and directory domain estimate. Compared with the random digit dialing approach, dual frame approach gains in higher precision (smaller variance of the poststratified estimator) and lower nonsampling error (advance letter can gain rapport). Further, survey cost is lower than the random digit dialing approach because of the higher proportion of productive numbers in the directory sample. The largest drawback to this approach is the need to use a special estimator. Further investigations both of alternative estimators and the value of this approach in telephone surveys are suggested. To conclude this section, considering only the theoretical aspects, since Hong Kong has a high telephone penetration, well- designed telephone numbering system and well-edited telephone directories, we recommend that systematic or clustered telephone directory-based sampling can be the first option of sampling strategy in conducting telephone surveys because itis feasible and simple to implement with considerable representativeness, Empirical confirmation of this assertion will be presented in Part II. On the other hand, itis suggested that more experimental studies should be done in Hong Kong to test Potthofi's generalized sampling scheme; otherwise, we do not know the applicability of this scheme in Hong Kong. In November 1996, the SSRC of the University of Hong Kong is doing a clustered RDD experiment to provide necessary data for testing this kind of sampling scheme. Having presented the available probabilistic telephone sampling strategies, we 46are going to discuss computer- assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) and the present situation of adopting CATI in Hong Kong. First-hand data are collected for this purpose since there is no available data about CATI in Hong Kong, Survey errors inherent in telephone surveys will be dealt in Chapter Three which is the core theoretical aspect of this thesis, with particular reference to Hong Kong. 2.4 CATI in Hong Kong Market Research Industry 2.4.1 What is CA’ A General Introduction With the rapid development of computer technology in recent years, computer- assisted telephone interviewing (CAT!) which is considered a cost-effective and efficient data collection means is a product of statistical and computer science. These changes have arisen not only because of technological developments but also because of the increasing cheapness of computer hardware and the availability of portable microcomputers and microcomputers for home use. (Stray, 1989) There are several related variants such as computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI), computer- assisted self-administered questionnaires (CASQ), computer-assisted panel research (CAPAR) and computer-assisted self interviewing (CASI) (see Nicholls, 1986 & 1988; Stray, 1989; Winter and Clayton, 1990). All of these make use of computer facilities when processing data and these computerized and non-traditional data collection methods comprise the family of computer- assisted data entry (CADE), On the other hand, a recent newly developed channel to dial IDD calls could be via the Intemet worldwide computer network, it combines the telephone and computer systems to dial international calls. In addition, the success of interactive videoconferencing (and even virtual conferencing) is a brilliant breakthrough of visual methods when communicating via telephone lines which is 4originally a voice-based system. All of these suggest that CATI should have a bright development in the future. This section is going to present some important features of CATI system and the experiences in the U.S., the U.K. and Hong Kong The assessment of data quality and operation costs incurred using CATI will be put under the Section of Telephone Survey Errors and Survey Costs in Chapter Three. A generic definition of CATI is provided by Nicholls (1988): Computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CAT) employs interactive computing system to assist interviewers and supervisors in performing the basic data-collection tasks of telephone interview surveys. This definition clearly excludes the cases that any surveys employ computers solely for data-entry and processing. This misconception of CATI is however found in the research industry in Hong Kong. This reflects the rather weak knowledge of CATI in Hong Kong. Detailed research findings are presented in Section 2.4.4. Stray (1989) suggests that a typical CATI system would be for a central computer system to down load the names and telephone numbers of the people to be interviewed to a micro as well as details of the questionnaire to be used. The conception and types of CATI, however, depends largely and jointly by the ways of uses of CATI and the fields of applications. The system of CATI is ranging from a standalone computer workstations to networked computer systems (minicomputers or mainframe servers). The capabilities of a typical! CATI system, according to Nicholls (1988), includes sample management, online call scheduling and case management, online interview, online monitoring, automatic record keeping and preparation of data sets. Nicholls (1986) considers that online call scheduling affects both interviewer productivity level and measures of data quality dependent on the frequency and efficiency of calling. Of course, the degree of capability is largely related to the computer system connected. Nicholls (1988) listed three complementary as well as competing functions with derived benefits about CATI. These functions are 481. CATT as a means to facilitate or expedite telephone surveys; 2. CATI as a means to enhance and control survey data quality; and 3. CATI as a means to permit new types of surveys not possible with pen-and- pencil methods, The benefits derived from function (1) are: (Ja) fast and simple methods for questionnaire setup, (1b) direct support of interviewers in selecting respondents, (1c) entry of responses in machine readable form to speed processing, and (1d) simple methods of generating output files and administrative reports. For function (2), the benefits derived are: (2a) systematic control over the scheduling of calls and callbacks, (2b) tailored wording of computer questions based on prior responses, (2c) computer-controlled branching between questionnaire items and sections, (24) automatic range and consistency edit checking during the interview, and (2e) careful monitoring of interviewer performance to ensure that intended procedures are followed. For function (3), the derived functions are (Ba) randomize question sequences or question wording in complex factorial design, (3b) incorporate arithmetic calculations or logical checks not readily performed with paper methods, (Bc) utilize table looking routines to match responses with hits of possible alternatives, (3d) use data from prior interviews (or records) in dependent interviewing without disclosing that data to the interviewer in advance. 49It should be noted that the third function may be treated as an extension of the second one; however, the first function is not necessarily consistent with the second two, at least the sophistication of setups are different. Concerning the questionnaire design, there are three schools of CAT! questionnaire designs which depend on the degree of sophistication of the CATI system. Item- based CATI systems is only a forward movement design and items therefore have to be answered in sequence. Screen-based CATI displays several items at a time and it uses soreen as the basic unit of questionnaire design and so it is especially suitable for sets of noncontingent questions on the same topic and for multiple answer questions. Although branching is computer controlled, itis still a forward movement design. Form-based CATI permits the interviewer to use cursor control keys to complete the table formatted questions in any order. It allows both forward and backward movement that toggles between the 'pages' of questionnaires. The last may be called the hybrid design that permits itemn-based, screen-based and form-based display in different parts of the same questionnaire. Multiple windows can accommodate both item and form based CATI concurrently on the same scteen, Different schools of questionnaire designs require the interviewers to have different knowledge and skill so that trainings are different. With the development of ‘hypertext! and ‘hypermedia’ in computer programming architecture, the forward and backward movement should become the dominant design. The trend of new design of CATI systems seems prompted more by the integration into broader systems than by enhancement of the CATI system per se. That is the CATI systems will be embedded as one of many functions performed by larger computer based survey systems, It can be sure that the future of CATI is bright since the continuing marked success of computer technology and the drastic declining price of computer systems, However, the popularity of CATI still depends mostly on the level of knowledge of the research practitioners, the social definition of telephone 30and the image of surveys among the general public. Further research on these aspects is important, 2.4.2 The Experiences in the United States Telephone interviewing started in the United States and is a relatively new form of data collection in the U.K., Western Europe and Asia, About the experiences of CAT in the U.S., Nicholls (1986, 1988) summarized as follows : The first CATI systems were developed by U.S, market research organizations in the early 1970s. Based on experiences in the first CATI survey, conducted by Chilton Research for AT&T in 1971, Nelson Peyton and Bortner (1972) described "three distinct advantages" for cathode ray tube interviewing (as it was then called) in comparison with conventional data collection methods. These were: "accuracy, speed, and reduced costs". (Nicholls, 1986). During this period, the market research firms using CATI are also found in other countries outside the U.S., such as Australia, Canada, Netherlands and West Germany etc. University survey research centers began independent development of CATI in the mid 1970s. The UCLA Center for Computer-Based Behavior Sciences led the way of implementing CATI. The Center's Director, Gerald Shure, coined the CATI name and acronym, (ef. Gerald H. Shure and Robert J. Meeker, "A Mini-Computer System for Multiperson Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing" in Behavior Research Methods and Instrumentation, Vol.1, No.2, 1978, Pp.196-202). Most importantly, the university research centers expanded the CATI capabilities ftom non- probabilistic sampling to probabilistic sampling and they also improved the range of call scheduling and callback routines in order to maintain high response rates and greater freedom of interviewer movement. The U.S. governmental agencies demonstrated an early interest in CATI but did not begin acquiring their own CATI capabilities until the early 1980s. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Statistical Reporting Service and the U.S. Census Bureau both established staffteams for implementation and testing of CATI surveys. It should be noted that a ‘common government application of CATI is for case-follow-up so that mixed mode of data collection is in use (eg. CAPAR, longitudinal demographic surveys and CAPL, when respondents not reachable by the phone) may also be used if necessary. The development of CATI in Hong Kong is similar with the case mentioned above in the United States. Although there has been no systematic study of the history of using CATI in Hong Kong, a survey on the current practice of CATI in Hong Kong research organizations has been conducted by myself and the results are then presented in Section 2.4.4. 2.4.3 The Experiences in the United Kingdom The development of CATI in the United Kingdom should be expected to be as advanced as the case in the United States. However, CATI in the United Kingdom has not been well-documented, although we have searched different sources, for example, the Journal of Market Research Society (JMRS) (but there are some advertisements about CATI in their Research Plus Magazine) and internet searching via some search engines over computers. Two pieces of related information are found from intemet search and JMRS, they are about using computers in market research and transport industry in the UK. Taylor Nelson AGB plc is a leading market research company and has offices in London, Paris, Madrid and Brussels. Tony Cowling (1996), the Group Chief Executive of Taylor Nelson AGB ple, in 1996 reported that the group uses a wide range of technology to collect, analyse and disseminate information including the use of barcode technology to collect data on consumer purchasing and by collecting «his by computer over the telephone so that it can provide rapid and accurate information for decision making. The group considered that the telephone is certainly an important tool for interviewing and when it is linked to a computer system it becomes even more powerful. The group has one of the largest Computer Aided Telephone Interview (CATI) systems in Europe. Some 250,000 interviews were 52completed in 1995 and many of them international. Computers are, of course, also used for analysis and manipulation of data and some of the information because the group provides data are in electronic format. Jones and Polak (1993) admitted that computer-assisted telephone interviewing is now well established and has quite quickly become the (market research) industry norm for telephone surveys, but the use of computers for face-to-face interviews is still relatively limited in social and market research in the UK. One exception is in the transport industry, where computer-based interviews are now the norm for mi mplex forms of conjoint analysis research and several consultants have developed proprietary software. Jones and Polak (1993) suggested two reasons why the take-up of computer- assisted/based interviewing in the UK has been relatively limited. ‘The reasons are (J) for the largest and most complex forms of survey, the main impediments to using computers are probably lack of familiarity (both on the part of the executives and their field force), and (2) the cost of the hardware and the software, and the problems of distributing and retrieving computers in an industry where the same interviewer may work for several companies. Companies working in the transport sector have got around these problems by writing their own software and offering clients 'value-added’ facilities using computer. For general household-based personal interviews, computers are still a less attractive proposition, except when using a dedicated field force using simpler machines. The authors also comments that there might be a role for The Market Research Society in encouraging an industry-wide transition to using computers for certain types of survey. 3Providing a historical account on CATI in the UK, the coming section draws heavily on the paper by Collins (1983). It should be noted that the data cited is about thirteen years old so that it may not be applicable in United Kingdom today To ‘explain’ the phenonmeon that although CATI is well- established in the U.S. as a data collection method in both market and social research, this is not the case in other English-speaking countries such as the United Kingdom, Collins (1983) stated that the U-K. environment is very different due to (1) telephone interviewing is not widely used for interviews with private households; (2) it tends to be regarded as an inferior and limited substitute for face-to-face interviewing. Further, collecting data by the aid of eiectronic machines is by no means equivalent to using CATI, other means such as using videotex and cable are more popular in some U.K. research agencies; and (3) telephone interviewing and CATI are after all two logically distinct methods so that they could grow separately. Collins (1983) pointed out two main negative pressures towards computer-assisted data entry (CADE) and hence applicable to CATI. First, it may only be a gimmick that computer assistance will be beneficial in survey data collection. A computer may seen as a barrier between the survey practitioners and respondents. The history of relative underachievement of computer technology in the U.K. contributes to the growth of suspicion regarding CADE. Second, the unfamiliarity with the telephone in the U.K. is widely believed to impose severe limitations on the kind of data that can be collected, and on the length of an interview. It should be noted that the second argument entangles with ingrained prejudices about the social image of telephone in the U.K... About the current status of CATI in the UX., Collins (1983) cited the survey results on CATI facilities in U.K. survey organizations. These results were published by the Market Research Development 54Fund (MRDF). The number of interviewing stations ranges from 30 down toa standalone computer. It shows that some agencies adopt the centralized (at least networked) CATI systems. But the popular systems are based on micro- computers, Table 3 : CATE Facilities in UK Survey Organizations (as at Mav, 1983 ‘Organon ——]-Nariberat | —__ ase - Stations ‘GRL-TATI Reseach 7 Var Indep. Res. Bureau Wake Res Enerpies 35 [Rew Beans DEG Prime ST "NOP Market Reseach 0 Prime [IMAS Survey Research 16 VAX; POTTS "MTC Research Group 16 Via Audis & Surveys, NY. FDS Marke Reseach 1 "BBC Mista ‘Burke RSL 6 VAX Marian -Datpian é Pixel ample Suveyt 3 Tors ‘Marketing Seences 3 Mi MIVA Conslaney 3 Prime aL z ier Transm z Vir Toren Carek ames 7 Sie Daa Cilection & Tp 7 Micro ‘Overseas maret Reseweh | Epion EXOT Plas Four Arayss T Prime (TS) [= "Prodee Stades t Prime (TS) Suny Fore i Mero Wire Marke Research Devlopran Find Peradeced Cola UVES, Conceming the fiture investment on CATI, Collins (1983) said, according to the survey figures, as many as one in five of the 180 suppliers of computer software expressing "certain" or "very likely" to invest (or to invest further) in CATI. ‘Nearly half of both suppliers and users saw it [CATI] as having only limited value for either large and complex surveys or small and very simple surveys. In addition, about 90% of both suppliers and users of market research expected the use of telephone interviewing to increase but about 25% were personally opposed to this development. Three broad categories of constrains and reservations on the growth of telephone interviewing (and hence of CATI) were listed by Collins (1983) : 1, Low Telephone Ownership: ‘The penetration rate of residential telephone ownership in the U.K. in 1983 was about 73% and that these households contained 77% of the adult domestic population. There is approximately 4% annual increase in telephone 35ownership but 85% is the expected ceiling penetration rate. The non- ownership is increasingly concentrated among the rather low socio-economic status groups who are often the focal respondents for academic research. 2. Limitations on the amount and depth of data that can be collected ina telephone interview: ‘The majority view is that questions in telephone interviews have to be simple closed questions about unambiguous, non-sensitive factual topics and non- visual-aided items. This is one of the social prejudices of using the telephone to collect data and it must be overcome for CATI to have a chance of wide acceptance, 3. Public opposition or resentment of the greater intrusiveness of the telephone: Many U.K. researchers anticipate not only a lower level of agreement to take part in telephone surveys but also a higher post-interview resentment. The confusion of telephone direct selling is also detrimental to the survey industry Nevertheless, Collins (1983) reported a comparison survey on telephone versus face-to-face interviewings conducted by the Social and Community Planning Research (SCPR) Survey Method Center. Collins stated that the general impressions is of encouraging similarity between the two sets of results. About the response rate, Collins (1983) reported that it was about 5% below that achieved in face- to-face interviewing (65% response rate), a pattern similar to that reported by ‘American researchers, However, the gain of "high" response rate was off-set by @ higher incidence of refusal to cooperate. This certainly supports the industry prejudice against telephone surveys. Collins’ paper describes the telephone interviewing and CATI practices in U-K. research industry, but it does not tell much about the development of using CATI both in the governmental agencies and the university academic institutes, so caution is necessary when making inference. 56244 tudy of CATI in Hong Kong Research Industry For the purpose of getting the profile of the current CATI practice in the market research industry in Hong Kong, we carried out a ‘census' by using telephone interviewing in April 1995 (the questionnaire and covering letter can be referred to Appendix X & XI), the frame was according to the sections of Marketing Research & Analysis and Data Processing Service of the Hong Kong Commercial/Industrial Guide Yellow Pages 94/95 (CIGYP). By a'pilot screening’ implemented in December, 1992, 123 valid entries were verified to see if they are actually doing market research or related business. The result was that 24.4% (30 cases) were confirmed as ‘eligible cases’. (see Table 4 and Table 5) Since the frame is copied from CIGYP, so the problem of coverage is exactly due to the completeness of the said directory. We believe that this should include ‘all’ working companies since no one wants to be ‘unlisted’ in the business directory if he or she does want to do business. Expectedly, there are only vo out of thirty cases (6.7%) claimed by themselves have been using CATI, so they are treated separately (that is, they are asked by ‘long-form’ questionnaire) and the results are presented in Section 2.4.5 (Cf. Table 4) In what follows, we first present the statistics of the telephone interview. ‘Table 4 : USECATI - AlreadvUseCATI ‘Response | Frequenay | Percent | Valid Percent Ne 2 238 353 Yes z 16 67, Oihers 3) 5.6 | MISSING Total 12371000 700.0 Noes 1 Wald Cass #30; 2 Oia = inaigie cats The majority of the entries listed in the directory are not doing market research nor related business, 51.7% (60 cases) are doing other business and 22.4% (26 cases) 7are not-yet-registered for doing business, there are only 25.9% (30 cases) verified as doing market research or related business. (see Table 5) Of these 30 ‘working! organisations, 93.3% (28 cases) say that they have never used CATI but 39.3% (1 cases) of these organisations claimed their computer systems are networked. It must be noted that the logical development of CATI is from a networked computer system, Table 5 : BUSINESS - MainBusiness Response | Frequency | Percent | Valid Percent iaiRes Related 30248 259 Others oa) NoiRegistered [211 224 NaResponse/NA, T[ 1000 | —~“io0.0 Total 123) 1000 100.0 Note: Vaid Cases = 16; Mising Ces 7 Of the 28 organisations which have not yet used CATI, 32.1% (9 cases) are not yet-decided to use CATI in the future, 35.7% (10 cases) are not-known if they may ‘use CATT in the future and 32.1% (9 cases) will definitely not use CATI. (see Table 6) ‘Table 6 : INTEND-IntendToUseCATI [Response [Frequency [Valid Percent ] NotVewecided 2 320 ‘NorKnown 0 357 ‘Never 9 321 Toul 5 00.0 Note: Vaid Case ‘Then a multi-response item to ask why they do not use CATT so far, excluding the non-applicable and non-respondent cases, there are only 26 cases answer this item, the ranked reasons (according to valid percent) are tabulated in Table 7: 38‘Table 7: WHYNOTI - WhyNotUseCATI ‘Response | FreaiCases | Valid Percent | Rank Tse0iherMethods T3A6 S771 WoNeedToUsecaTi | 1076 3es ‘NoldeaAbouiCATT “76 263; 3 Costly T 5726 is2[ 4 NeeiSofoware 326 ns[ 5 NeedTimeTrainStal? 76 Trp Ft ‘NesdHardware 7226 Taft NoitlerkerTrend 126 38[ 8] Itis important to note that CATI may not be currently suitable in Hong Kong market research, since other data collection methods are being more popularly adopted by the market research companies. If CATI becomes one of the ‘popular’ means of getting research data, the personnel in the market research industry will need to invest time and money to setup CATI, including software and hardware. In addition, the practitioners need to learn the necessary knowledge of CATI because there is nearly one-third of the responses showing that they do not have any idea about CATI. Last but not the least, the following tables show the result (Table 8), number of attempts (Table 9) and time spent (Table 10) when conducting the telephone interview, Table 8 : RESULT. -esultOfPhoneInterview Response | Frequency | Percent | Valid Percent Suscess 2) 28 GH Refusal 3p 2F 7.0 Chased a7 33 33, NaContact ops T£0] ChaigeBusiness T os 23 FaxLine T 08 23 Others B60] MISSING Total ws [1000 TOO oie 1 Val Cases =; 2 Others ineligible cass tines no longer subscribed, sulted ete ‘The success rate is 65.1% which is considered acceptable in most telephone surveys. 59Table 9 : ATTEMPT - NumberOfContact ‘Response | Frequency | Percent | Valid Percant One [isa 34 Two 373 231 Thee T oR Br Four T on 31 Six 21 T6 63 Others 3 [740 | MISSING (rear 123 [1009 100 Noes t mean=I.8, wedian= mode! 0 SETS 2 Valid Cases = 32 (2 of then fly veried ineligible) 5. Others= ineligible cases, Nearly 60% of the 'successfitl' cases only contact once, The low number of attempts actually benefits from the pilot screening conducted in December last year. Table 10 : TIME - NearestMinutesOflnterview Response | Frequensy [Percent | Valid Pereene Five! spat 172 | Six Tr 35) 379) Seven ze 35. Eight 3724 103 Ten tl 276 Thiers 3] 764 | MISSING Total Tas To00 TOO.0 ows T-meane7, median = mode=60, = 1, 2, Valid Cases = 29 5. Others = ineligible cases (93 cases) and one ase replied by fax As the questionnaire is quite short, the time for interview is around 6 to 7 minutes with standard deviation 1.9 minutes. 2.4.5 Case Study 2.4.5.1 Research Companies According to the telephone interview, only two research companies in Hong Kong claimed by themselves that they have been doing CATI so far. The following descriptions should reflect the current practice of CATI in Hong Kong. For confidentiality, we name the said companies by A and B. Both companies are each deemed as one of the few large market research companies in Hong Kong. 60The history of using CATI for both companies is very short, for company A is less than three years and since 1996 for company B. The spokesmen said that the CATI system they are implementing is just at the testing’ stage although some projects have been done by CATI. Relating to CATI, the computer configurations! systems that are being used are mostly personal computers (PCs), Networking (LAN) is used in company B so that the CATI system is ‘centralized’ but the spokesman for company A does not know whether the system is networked or not. The recent projects which are done by CATI are about ‘house-product’ for company A and ‘auditing survey’ for company B. About the projects, there are around 15 part-time interviewers engaged in the house-product survey but 10 to 20 full-time interviewers are involved in the auditing survey. The two companies are quite similar in some features when conducting CATI survey; namely, the format of the questionnaire design are the same as item-based design’, semi-automated’ CATI system to deal with unexpected situations (eg. sudden interruption by the respondents or inconsistent responses given by the respondents ete.) during the interview, ‘automatic scheduling of the call-backs' done by the system, ‘optimal timing’ can be determined by the system, ‘on-line monitoring’ via computer, telephone system as well as using audio monitoring by cassette tapes are used by both companies. Although both companies are only at the ‘testing’ stage of the CATI systems, according to the experience so far, they agreed that when comparing CATI with door-to-door interviewing, in general, CATI has "better data quality’, lower interviewing cost (after the setup cost)’ and 'more or less equal interviewer-effect!. In addition, the spokesman of company A said that CATT has ‘higher response rate, ‘shorter interviewing time' than door-to-door interviewing in general. These are opposite to the viewpoints expressed by company B. For both companies, the expectation of CATI in Hong Kong research industry are quite ‘optimistic’. They consider that CATI can be further developed in the industry since this is a worthwhile tool to collect data, but suitable software (CATI 6computer programming and knowledge workers etc.) and hardware (computer system etc.) are the indispensable necessary conditions for developing CATI. The large amount of cost (particularly the initial hardware and software setup) for running CATI is one of the hindrances of implementing CATI; however, the marginal fieldwork cost is low once the CATI system has been established. 2.4.5.2 The Census and Statistics Department ‘The Section of Labour Statistics Branch - Employment and Vacancy of Hong, Kong Government has been using CATI for surveys since 1990. The CATI system is managed by statisticians. There are about 60 microcomputers based on a VAX system and the CATT is thus centralized. They adopt the CATI to collect data on employment and vacancies on quarterly basis. The projects usually involve around 50 temporary but trained workers. The format of the questionnaire design is item- based. The CATI system can automatically deal with some specified unexpected situations during the interviewing process, but it cannot determine the ‘optimal’ call-back time by the system itself. The monitoring is through the computer system. Although the Section has not done thorough studies on assessing the CAT effects, the statistician who is charge of the system commented that CATI in gereral is not worse than personal interviewings (PI); the response rate for both modes of data collection is more or less equal, but CATI yields better data quality since cross-check of the data by computerized records can be done. The interviewer-effect is lower in CATI because of on-line monitoring. Except for the initial setup cost, the interviewing cost per respondent is lower for CATI than for PI. The interviewing time depends largely on the type of the questions asked so that they cannot judge if CATT is longer or shorter. However, the statistician emphasized that the efficiency of CATI is basically topic- dependent and hence CATI should not be applied blindly. o2.4.5.3 The Academic Institutes Among the seven governmental-funded universities in Hong Kong, there are three institutes; namely, the University of Hong Kong (HKU), the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKST) and the Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), have been using CATI for survey data collection with the very recent addition of CUHK this year. The table below shows the use of CATI facilities: Table 11: CAT! facilities in HKU, HKST & HKBU as at June, 1996) Organisation | Year of inro'd Base SoESei Res Ce, 1930 | S86SKIPCS HKU SoeSe Dept, 1994 ar Yes Ye HKUST computers Sociology Dep, TaT | -BODXIPCS Yes Ye HKU ¥ Cenalized server but ndividal daa Te “+5 Data fles stored on Ble server of the netvork, They apply CATI for different survey topics ranging from attitudinal (privacy attitudes) to factual topics (determinants of marital timing of women). Two of the organizations employ part-time workers for CATI surveys, the other one replied “don't know’. The format of questionnaire design are entirely different including item, soreen and form-based. The CATI systems can automatically dea! with the unexpected situations during the interviewing process, at least semi-automatically. But all of the CATI systems cannot determine the ‘optimal’ call-back time. Two of the organizations monitor the interviewing process through the computer system while the other one is by the presence of supervisor in the interviewing room. About the comparison of CATI with PI, most of them do not know much about that since they have yet tested the CATI effects. However, some of them considered that in general CATI has higher response rate, shorter interviewing time, better data quality, lower interviewing cost and interviewer-effect, When asked about the future of CATI in Hong Kong, they optimistically expect that 683CATI dominates PI in the future, particularly when the CATI can be written in Chinese and the survey practitioners (especially among the market research companies) consent more on the usefulness of CATI. 2.5 A Callback model for Telephone Surveys 2: .1 Introduction Potthoff et al (1993) proposed a simple callback model which is suitable for some telephone surveys and requires estimates of two parameters of the beta distribution. It is well-known that estimates may be biased if the survey respondents who differ in their availability and also differ in their average characteristics, For example, employed and unemployed persons differ in their availability for interviewing and biased survey response may hence be resulted. Remedies of nonavailability for interviewing includes making enough callbacks (this is often costly or even infeasible if a survey period is tight and short) and assigning higher weight to sample persons who were less available, For example, the Politz- Simmons "night- at-home" weighting scheme in 1950 and Simmons weighting scheme in 1954 allowing for callbacks. Potthoff et al (1993) commented that (a) under these schemes, the question used to obtain the nights-at-home information may be perceived as intrusive and may not yield accurate answers and (b) these schemes do not fully eliminate bias, because of "Class 0” - the group not at home any night of the period. Potthoff et al (1993) thus proposed several callback models which can avert the above problems. We only focus on models dealing with telephone surveys of which a two-parameter model may suffice, as they speculated and confirmed. In the coming sections, we summarise the key elements of Potthoff's two-parameter callback model that is suitable for telephone surveys. 2.5.2 Assumptions and Basic Concepts of the model To simplify the exposition of the model, several key assumptions and basic concepts are listed below: 64(a) Refusals do not exist; that is, that anyone who is available to respond will freely do so (this assumption can be relaxed if the model becomes more sophisticated). (b) Let the population mean of a response variable Y that depend, in part, on p, the probability that a particular population member is at home and available to respond when an interviewer calls. Assume that p is beta distributed across, population members and write P Beta(o.,B) or f(p) = p*'(1-p)”/B(@,B) ~ (15) where 0< p< | and B(a,B) = T(@)T(BYT (a8) is the beta function and I(k)=(k-1)! where k is real. (©) The conditional expectation of Y given p is assumed to be linear (other functions of p could be used although this may need higher order of moments), i.e., E(Yip)=a+ bp —~ (16). At this point Y is treated as continuous and modifications for discrete Y's are possible. (d) Each sample member not interviewed earlier is to receive C callbacks (C > 0) before interview attempts are stopped. Callbacks exclude the first attempt, so for any sample member there are up to (C+1) attempts. Let X (x = 0,1,2,..C) denote the number of callbacks made and assume that the distribution of X conditional on P =p is geomettic, ice, (x{p) = p(1-p)%, x = 0,1,2,...00 (17) if there is no censoring or truncation for x > C. The marginal distribution of the number of callbacks, x is thus given by 209 = feotpyeemep oD (a +B)F(B+x) where x=0, 1, 2, ... -~- (18). T(at+P+x+DI(6) This is essentially a geometric distribution in connection with callbacks. 65The goal is to estimate the parameter E(Y), taking expectation on (16) and assuming (15); that is, E(Y) = B[E(Y |P)] = a+ bo(a+B)' ~~ (19) where P = a(a+B)". tis reasonable to assume that, condition! on p, the response variable Y is independent of the number of callbacks; that is, flysx{p) = Ryip)f(xlp) = flylpx)f(xlp) —- (20). ‘Thus, assuming the order f integration E{E(Y|P}x] may be changed, one obtains E[E(Y|P)|x] = E(Y|x) -- (21) and this is not true in general without (20). Further, itis easy to show that Pix _ Beta(oct1,B-+x); that is a beta-geometrie distribution with expectation E(P}x) = (a+1)(a+B+x+1)" — (22). Using results (16) and (22), we get (YI) = ELECY|P xt = Bla + bPix] =a+bELPR] = at blatl)(atB+x+1)! ~ (23). With o: and B given (they may be estimated using MLEs and the analysis can then proceed using estimates of a and f in lieu of the true values but this will be biased since it should use Ef(a+1)(oc+8-+x+1)"] for each value of x, atthe very least. Alternatively, a full Bayesian solution may be applied in this respect), one can apply the usual least squares formulas to a sample of (X,y) to estimate a and b in (23). Finally, using the estimates of a (a ) and b (b) resulting from (23), then my =a+ Pb--- (24) is the estimator of E(Y) of (19). In matrix notation, let E(y|x) = A’p where y and x are n by 1 vectors and n is the number of completed interviews; A is 2 by nmatrix in which the first column is a unit vector and the second column is the vector of the elements 66