Predictive Dialing

Predictive dialing is a telephone call placement technology that is used in survey research to improve utilization of interviewer time during computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) surveys. In random-digit dialing (RDD) surveys, typically fewer than 15% of dialings are answered by a human; for the [Page 603]remaining 85%, and when predictive dialing is not used by a telephone research center, interviewers must disposition unanswered numbers, data or fax lines, disconnects, and answering machines. With predictive dialing, the dialer will handle many of these unproductive calls in the “background,” passing calls to interviewers only when a call connects with a human being. The resulting increase in the proportion of “talk time” for the interviewer—time spent by the interviewer persuading and/or interviewing respondents—not only provides direct cost savings, ...