National election studies method comparison project, 1982

In early 1982, the National Election Studies obtained additional support from the National Science Foundation for a systematic study comparing survey data collected through traditional methods (household sampling and personal interviewing) with data collected by random digit dial (RDD) telephone sampling using computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI). The study took place in conjunction with the previously funded 1982 National Election Study of congressional elections. The broad purposes of the data collection were to permit the NES staff and user community to assess overall differences between the two data collection techniques in sample and measurement quality, and to carry out a series of additional methodological experiments concerned with question format, computer-assisted procedures, and survey organization. The resulting study consists of 998 complete or partial telephone interviews, all of which were conducted in the three months following the 1982 elections. Because of parallel work in the development of computer-assisted telephone interviewing at Berkeley and Michigan, the telephone sample was randomly allocated to two different interviewing sites, one operated by the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center, and one by University of California-Berkeley's Program in Computer-Assisted Survey Methods.