Preliminary Observations on the Telephone Survey as a Research Tool in New Providence

This paper describes our experiences from using the telephone survey as a research tool in New Providence. Gender specific surveys may be complicated by the fact that females are more likely to answer the telephone than males. Respondents often seem suspicious of telephone callers, and so might be uncooperative. The large proportion of telephone lines "not in service" means that many numbers are dialled unsuccessfully. Variation between exchanges in the proportion of completed calls could result in uneven survey coverage of the island. This variability appears to be related to socio-economic factors that could bias survey results.