Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
The advantages of telephone surveys would be negated if telephone subscribers were not representative of total populations, including nonsubscribers. Surprisingly, the literature on this subject is somewhat limited. A study was done to ascertain whether there are any important differences between telephone subscribers and nonsubscribers. From a combination of NORC surveys, analysis of more than 7500 respondents shows that, in most cases, less than 2% of the responses on a single item of a telephone sample will differ from equivalent responses of a sample of the total population.
Lee M. Wolfle (Wed,) studied this question.