Aural Communication

Aural communication involves the transmission of information through the auditory sensory system—the system of speaking and hearing. It usually encompasses both verbal communication and paralinguistic communication to convey meaning. Aural communication can be used to transmit information independently or in combination with visual communication. When conducting surveys, the mode of data collection determines whether information can be transmitted aurally, visually, or both. Whether survey information is transmitted aurally or visually influences how respondents first perceive and then cognitively process information to provide their responses.

Aural communication relies heavily on verbal language when information is transmitted through spoken words. Additionally, paralinguistic or paraverbal communication, in which information is conveyed through the speaker's voice, is also an important part of aural communication. Paralinguistic communication can convey additional information through voice quality, tone, pitch, volume, inflection, pronunciation, and accent that can supplement or modify the meaning of verbal communication. Paralinguistic communication is an extremely important part of aural communication, especially in telephone surveys, where visual communication is absent.

Since aural and visual communication differ in how information is presented to survey respondents, the type of communication impacts how respondents initially perceive survey information. This initial step of perception influences how respondents cognitively process the survey in the remaining four steps (comprehension, retrieval, judgment formation, and reporting the answer). Whereas telephone surveys rely solely on aural communication, both face-to-face and Internet surveys can utilize aural and visual communication. Face-to-face surveys rely extensively on aural communication with the occasional use of visual communication by utilizing show cards or other visual aids. In contrast, Web surveys use mostly visual communication but have the potential to incorporate aural communication through sound files, a practice that is still fairly uncommon and generally only used to transmit information to respondents. Paper surveys do not utilize any aural communication.

The influence that aural communication has on perception and cognitive processing of information can contribute to effects between modes that rely primarily on aural communication and modes that rely primarily on visual communication. For example, aural transmission of information makes higher demands on memory capacity than visual transmission because respondents must remember information communicated to them without a visual stimulus to remind them. Additionally, in aural communication, the flow or pace is usually controlled by the interviewer, so the respondent may have more pressure to respond quickly rather than being able to fully process the information at his or her own pace. Because of these influences of aural communication on processing time and memory, surveyors often shorten questions and limit the amount of information respondents need to remember at one time in telephone surveys where aural communication cannot be supplemented by visual communication. However, this design difference can impact whether data from telephone surveys can be combined with or compared to data collected using primarily visual communication, where longer and more complex questions and sets of response options are often used.