He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton in 1992 and returned to campus in 1998 after working in the survey research industry. Freeland explains that the computer can collect thousands of telephone numbers, distribute them at random to the center's telephone operators, dial the numbers automatically, recycle those numbers for reuse when no one answers, and quickly process the information taken from the resulting interviews. We have 12 stations and a supervisor all tied to the network, and now we're beginning our first big national telephone survey. The study now running is a project of three politics faculty members in the Woodrow Wilson School. Then we read the information about a candidate, and see how much people remember.
Some people get one kind of description, one that highlights certain aspects, some get others.
The study, which is not aligned with any particular candidate or party, began Feb. 19 and should continue until spring break. We need to dial all those numbers because so many of our calls result in non-contacts. This isn't necessarily due to people refusing to participate in our survey. The problem comes mainly from answering machines, call blocking, and non-working phone numbers that ring and never get answered. All these things make it harder to reach the households that are chosen for our sample.