Do You Answer Telephone Surveys? – Survey of the Day

When news organization want to find out what the public thinks about an issue, they often turn to opinion polling. Most of these surveys are of the telephone variety, meaning a random sample of people are called and asked if they would like to participate in a poll.

According to the Pew Research Center – which does a great deal of opinion polling — most say no. In all the surveys Pew has done 2012, only 14 percent of the people they reached on the phone agreed to participate. This marks a sharp decline from 1997 when 43 percent of the households contacted agreed to take part in the survey.

[Pew Research Center]