What administrative advantages are there for using a telephone survey instead of a survey relying on personal interviews?

What will be an ideal response?

Compared with personal interviewing, telephone surveys have several administrative advantages. Despite the cost of long-distance calls, centralization of survey administration is advantageous. Training of telephone interviewers may be easier. The real advantages to telephone surveys begin after interviewing starts. Greater supervision of interviewers and prompt feedback to them is possible. Also, callers can easily inform researchers of any problems they encounter with the survey. Coders can begin coding data immediately. If they discover any errors, they can inform interviewers before a large problem emerges. With proper facilities, interviewers may be able to code respondents’ answers directly on computer terminals. In some cases, the whole interview schedule may be computerized, with questions and responses displayed on a screen in front of the interviewer. The development of computer and telephone technologies gives telephone surveys a significant time advantage over personal interviews. Telephone surveys are also particularly good for situations in which statistically rare subgroups must be reached or estimated. Where large samples are required, telephone surveys are one-half to one-third the cost of personal interviews. Telephone surveys are also best if the research must be conducted in a short period of time while personal surveys are not as fast.