International Conference on Telephone Survey Methodology: Charlotte, NC, November 8-11, 1987

抽样调查是收集发达社会信息的主要方式。此外，该方法是社会学、政治学、经济学和心理学等学科中最常用的技术之一。在最近的调查趋势中，越来越多的人使用电话作为联络受访者的方式：面对面访谈费用的增加，计算机辅助电话方法的迅速发展，电话对家庭人口的覆盖范围的扩大，以及利用社会科学数据的统计建模技术的发展，这些都需要收集更多关于测量误差的信息，而不是抽样误差。电话调查方法的活动范围已从最初的商业部门扩展到学术和政府部门。从地理上看，人们的注意力已经从美国转移到大多数西欧国家和澳大利亚。目前正在这些不同的环境中重复进行方法学实验，结果有时会出现国家一级的差异。尽管世界各地都有这些重要的社会科学发展，但这一领域的研究人员很少有机会进行互动，他们的工作分散在几十种不同的期刊、研究报告和办公室备忘录中。以前没有举行过专门讨论与电话调查研究有关的问题的国际范围的会议，为了纠正这种情况，现在正在美国舆论研究协会、美国统计协会、以及国际调查统计学家协会。该会议是为多学科听众设计的，得到了多种来源的支持：政府机构、商业调查公司、私人基金会和注册费。美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）和美国人口普查局（U.S. Bureau of The Census）为该项目提供了全部资助，后者为此目的向美国国家科学基金会转移了资金。

Sample surveys are the dominant mode of collecting information about developed societies. In addition, the methodology is one of the most frequently employed techniques in the disciplines of sociology, political science, economics, and psychology. Recent trends in survey-taking have led to an increase in the use of the telephone as the means of contacting respondents: the increased cost of face-to-face interviewing, the rapid development of computer-assisted telephone methodology, the increased coverage of the household population by telephone, and the development of statistical modeling techniques with social science data requiring the collection of more information concerning errors of measurement, in contrast to sampling errors. The locus of activity in telephone survey methodology has spread from the commercial sector, where it began, to both academic and governmental sectors. Geographically, attention has spread from the United States to most Western European countries and Australia. Replications of methodological experiments are now taking place in these different environments, and country- level differences in results are sometimes appearing. Despite these important social science developments throughout the world, there are few opportunities for researchers in this area to interact, and their work is scattered throughout scores of different journals, research reports, and office memoranda. No conference devoted to the international scope of the problems associated with telephone survey research has previously been held, and to remedy that situation such a conference is now being organized under the joint sponsorship of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, the American Statistical Association, and the International Association of Survey Statisticians. The conference is designed for a multidisciplinary audience, with support from multiple sources: government agencies, commercial survey firms, private foundations, and registration fees. The National Science Foundation is one contributor to the total funding picture, along with the U.S. Bureau of the Census, which has transferred funds to NSF for this purpose.