TOUCH-TONE DATA ENTRY FOR HOUSEHOLD SURVEYS:

 RESEARCH FINDINGS AND POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS

Ruth B. McKay, Edwin L. Robison, and Athar B. Malik

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Ruth B. McKay, Rm. 4985, 2 Massachusetts Ave., NE, Washington DC 20212

KEY WORDS: Household Surveys, Touch-tone

Data Entry, cognitive testing

Introduction

In the mid-1980's, the Bureau of Labor Statistics

(BLS) pioneered the application of touch-tone data

entry (TDE) to business establishment surveys. The

success of TDE to improve response rates and timely

reporting for the Current Employment Statistics (CES)

has been well-documented (Clayton et al, 1989).

More recent work has documented increased

respondent satisfaction and reduced survey costs for

TDE reporters in the CES (Rosen et al, 1993).

The success of TDE for establishment surveys, not

only at BLS but the Bureau of the Census (Bond et al,

1993), led us to explore the possible application of this

mode of data reporting to household surveys. In late

1991, work was begun on a pilot TDE instrument for

household survey reporters. The BLS survey utilized

for this research was a short form of the redesigned

Current Population Survey (CPS). The wording of the

questions in the short form of CPS is identical to that

in regular CPS.

The short form of the CPS questionnaire asks the

minimum number of questions necessary to assign

household members to one of three labor force

categories: Employed; Unemployed; Not In Labor

Force. The shortest possible series, for those who did

any paid work last week, is 2 questions long.

Approximately 58% of respondents will be classifiable

as to labor force status after answering the 2-question

series.

The CPS Touch-tone Data Entry program allows

the respondent to answer open-ended questions as well

as those be answered by "yes" and "no." Cognitive

research on the pilot version indicated that respondents

of widely-differing educational status followed the

same rules as CPS interviewers in coding their openended responses. After the respondent has answered

the minimum number of questions necessary to be

classified as to labor force status, the program assigns

labor force status to that respondent.

Thus, if a respondent indicates that he/she could

not have returned to work last week, the program will

request that the respondent state the reason for this

inability*. After speaking the reason into the

telephone, the respondent will be asked to self-code

his/her open-ended answer as to why he/she could not

have returned to work. If the respondent codes the

open-ended answer as meaning that he/she was ill, and

presses "1," the program classifies the respondent as

"Unemployed." If the respondent codes the answer as

"2," a reason other than illness, the program classifies

the respondent as "Not In Labor Force."

The first phase of cognitive laboratory research on

the CPS-TDE instrument was conducted in 1993.

Nineteen respondents were interviewed using the short

form of the CPS questionnaire, following which the

respondents were asked to complete the same survey by

keying their responses to a telephone version of the

interview. Two respondents unwittingly pressed

incorrect keys during their data entry, found

themselves on the wrong paths, and were not able to

complete their reports. In addition, respondents had a

great deal of difficulty in recognizing the "line

number" when using the "TDE Reporter's Guide" to

report their household roster. The TDE instrument

and "TDE Reporter's Guide" were revised to correct

these problems.

METHOD

Subjects

The revised TDE instrument and Reporter's Guide

were tested with 35 subjects in April, 1994. Thirty

respondents were recruited by means of a Washington

Post classified ad; five respondents were BLS staff not

involved in the TDE research. The thirty subjects

recruited from outside the BLS were each paid twentyfive dollars at the conclusion of their visit to the BLS

Behavioral Science Laboratory. BLS staff were not

paid.

The demographic characteristics of the

respondents were as follows: there were twice as many

females as males, educational levels ranged from High
School graduate to Ph.D., and the respondents ranged

in age from 19 to 66 years of age.

Procedure

Respondents were first interviewed in a face-toface interview using the short form of the CPS

questionnaire. Following that interview, respondents

were provided with a "Touch-tone Reporter's Guide"

and the interviewer explained how to report their CPS

data by TDE. Respondents then completed the same

CPS interview as the first by keying their answers in to

the telephone version of the interview. After

completing the TDE interview, respondents were paid

their $25 and requested to call a toll-free number that

evening and complete the TDE interview from their

homes.

Materials

Respondents were offered a choice of telephone

instruments, with keypad in the hand-held receiver or

in the telephone base, and asked to choose the type of

telephone used in their home. For respondents who

used telephones with the keypad in the hand-held

receiver, we recommended that they place the

telephone receiver face up on the table in front of them

for ease of keying answers while listening to the

questions. (We had recorded the telephone script at a

very loud volume. Thus, it was possible to hear the

questions even though the ear piece/receiver was two to

three feet away from the respondent's ear)

Results

TDE In the Laboratory

Thirty respondents were able to complete their

interviews in one trial. Five respondents required a

second trial to complete their interviews. Two of the

five experiencing difficulty were pressing the keys too

lightly. Instructing these respondents to press the keys

with more force enabled them to successfully complete

their interviews on a second trial.

Three of the respondents experiencing difficulty

had problems with the concept of "Person Number" on

the Household Roster page of the TDE Reporter's

Guide. Although we had changed the term "Line

Number" on the Household Roster to "Person Number"

for ease of recognition, one respondent tried to enter

the year of birth for that person, and the other two were

baffled and did not attempt to enter any number. All

three were able to complete their TDE interviews on

the second trial after the "Person Number" was

explained in greater detail and highlighted in bright

yellow in the Reporter's Guide.

TDE Reporting From Home

Before they left the laboratory, respondents were

given a set of instructions on how to report by TDE

from home. We removed the 5 BLS staff members

from the "Eligible Sample" used to study TDE

reporting from home because they might be favorably

inclined to report from home. In addition, two of the

remaining thirty subjects were to call in their data on

an evening when a power outage brought the TDE

system down, and we have no way of knowing whether

these respondents called. Eliminating these two leaves

an "Eligible Sample" of 28 respondents.

Twenty-three of this "Eligible Sample" reported

from home, yielding a response rate of slightly better

than 82 percent. In analyzing the demographic

characteristics of the respondents and non-respondents

among the "Eligible Sample," we were pleased to

learn that we did not lose the oldest respondents nor

the respondents with fewer years of education.

Along with response rate, we were concerned with

reliability or the consistency of data reported in the

face-to-face interview, the TDE report in the

laboratory, and the TDE report from home. For the 35

cases for which we had face-to-face and TDE reports in

the laboratory, there was one case in which the

respondent answered one question differently in the

personal and the TDE interviews.

For the 23 cases for which we have three CPS

reports, the personal interview and TDE interview in

the lab as well as a TDE report from home, there were

two discrepancies. In one case in which the respondent

provided the same data in the personal and TDE

reports in the lab, but reported very differently from

home, the respondent left a voice note saying that he

was an inveterate computer hacker who could not resist

the temptation to explore other paths in the computer

program! In the second case, the respondent who

answered one question differently in the personal

interview and the TDE report in the laboratory, made

the same TDE error from home.

Future research is planned. We plan to develop a

text-to-speech component to read the names of persons

on the household roster to the reporter. That should

eliminate reporters' problems with recognizing the

"line number" or "person number" of persons on the

household roster. We plan to revise the instructions for
coding the response given to the open-ended TDE

question on job search strategies.

Finally, we will ask respondents to report their

household's labor force information for four

consecutive months. This will give some clues to

potential problems in respondent retention of the

knowledge necessary to execute the TDE report as well

as some indication of response rates over time.

Applications

One possible application of TDE to a BLS survey

is its potential use for CPS sample expansion.

Heightened recognition of the need to improve State

labor force estimates goes back to the 1960s work of

the Gordon Commission. The current State sample

sizes are too small to detect what some believe are

meaningful changes in month-to-month unemployment

rates. BLS and Census staff have offered several

alternative expansion plans over the years, all calling

for substantial increases in the sample, which were not

implemented because of the high cost of using

traditional data collection methods. The selective use

of TDE for data collection would reduce survey costs

and enable CPS sample expansion

Another possible application of Touch-tone Data

Entry is its use for special CPS labor force studies of

targeted non-English speaking populations. Whereas

bilingual interviewers may be difficult to obtain and

train for extended studies, the TDE instrument for CPS

can be adapted to any language.

Notes

*There is no voice recognition capability in the CPS

TDE instrument as yet. Spoken answers are recorded

for subsequent analysis of the correspondence between

a spoken response and the code that the respondent

assigns to that response.

References

Bond, D., Cable, G. and Andrews, S. (1993)

"Improving Response Rates by Touchtone Data Entry

on the Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories, and

Orders Survey," Proceedings of the International

Conference on Establishment Surveys, Alexandria,

VA: American Statistical Association, pp. 484 - 489.

Clayton, R.L. and L.J. Harrell, Jr. (1989). "Developing

a Cost Model of Alternative Data Collection Methods:

MAIL, CATI, and TDE," Proceedings of the Section

on Survey Research Methods, American Statistical

Association, pp. 264-269.

Rosen, R.J., R.L. Clayton, and L.L. Wolf (1993),

"Long term Retention of Sample Members Under

Automated Self-Response Data Collection,"

Proceedings of the Section on Survey Research

Methods, American Statistical Association.