Reflecting the Community: Demographic Variations in Landline and Cell-Only Households for a Statewide Telephone Survey

As Americans increasingly abandon their landline telephones in favor of cell phones, researchers face new challenges in conducting telephone surveys. The 2010 National Health Interview Study found that 31.1% of households in the southern United States have no landline (from: Blumberg SJ and JV Luke, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis.htm). This paper reviews how the addition of surveys with the cell-only population can impact the results of traditional landline surveys, and considers the costs and benefits of adding this hard to reach, but growing, population of telephone users. The Kentucky Health Issues Poll (KHIP) is a random digit dialing telephone health opinion survey of more than 1500 adults that has been conducted annually since 2008. A sample of more than 200 cell-only households was included on the 2009 and 2010 KHIP. The demographic characteristics of landline-only samples have been deficient when compared to Census estimates for Kentucky in representation of both younger and non-white respondents. In both 2009 and 2010, as compared to the unweighted landline sample, the unweighted cell-only sample was significantly more likely to be non-white and to be less than 35 years of age. Combining landline-only and cell-only surveys resulted in improved sample coverage, but did this improved coverage impact results? For example, the cell sample permitted the inclusion of considerably more uninsured Kentuckians than would have otherwise been possible with a landline-only sample (2010: OR = 2.3).