Americans' Move to Cellphones Complicates Polling, Pollster Tells Event at Google
As more Americans move to cellphones from landlines, pollsters face challenges getting respondents to take their calls and therefore answer their surveys, speakers said at a Google event Tuesday. With more than half of U.S. adults using cellphones as their…
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only phone, surveys have "shifted more to cellphone," said Kyley McGeeney of PSB, which does polling including for C-SPAN. "The problem is, cellphones are lot more expensive to dial" because one can't autodial them, said McGeeney, who also works with the American Association for Public Opinion Research. Most respondents are interviewed via cellphones, she told an event organized by the Society of Professional Journalists. "The noncontact rate" is "the problem" with those devices, she said, with response rates of about 9 percent. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act restricts calls from automatic telephone dialing systems to wireless phones.