Cold Call

A cold call refers to the circumstance that takes place in many surveys when a respondent is first called or contacted in person by a survey interviewer without any advance knowledge that he or she has been sampled to participate in the survey, and thus does not know that the call or contact is coming. This circumstance contrasts to other instances in which some form of advance contact has been made with the sampled respondent to alert him or her—that is, to “warm up” him or her—that he or she has been sampled and that an interviewer soon will be in contact. Survey response rates consistently have been found to be lower for those sampled respondents that receive cold calls than for those that receive ...