Do-Not-Call (DNC) Registries

A do-not-call (DNC) registry is a listing of people who have requested that they not receive any telephone calls from telemarketers on their residential telephone number(s). In the United States, these registries are maintained by the federal government and by government agencies in the majority of states. Survey research organizations are not prohibited from calling the numbers on the DNC registries, but many citizens fail to understand this, which causes them to be less willing to agree to participate when sampled for a telephone survey.

The birth of DNC registries has its roots firmly in the groundswell of public reaction in the United States to certain practices of the telemarketing industry that began in the 1980s and escalated considerably until 2003, when the national registry was implemented. The sheer volume of calls, telemarketers' penchant for calling in early evening hours (i.e. dinner time), and their abusive use of predictive dialing equipment all served to overwhelm the repeated attempts of the Direct Marketing Association and the American Telemarketing Association to gain industry agreement and compliance on self-policing measures. This failure of industry standards led to a snowballing of political sentiment that in turn led to legislation in 40 states and ultimately an umbrella National Do Not Call Registry overseen by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The do-not-call registry guidelines and restrictions generally do not directly affect the survey research industry—in fact, survey research is specifically exempted from the law. So, only in rare cases does the legislation ever have the chance of affecting the research industry. However, there is always the potential for interference by an overzealous prosecutor in some potential gray area, and consumers often do not recognize the difference between a telemarketing call and a request to participate in a survey. Indirectly, and through public ignorance, the DNC registries cause some sampled residents whose number is listed on the registry to refuse to participate in telephone surveys, at least in part because they mistakenly believe that survey researchers are restricted from calling their number.

Most citizens associate the DNC with the federal registry that was established in 2003. However, the first state-level DNC was put in place more than 15 years earlier, in Florida in 1987. The federal DNC was established under the 1994 Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act directing the FTC, and the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act providing authority to the FCC, to establish such a registry. Proposed rules and public discussions involving the establishment of the DNC began in 1999, with the first registrations taken in October 2003. In total, 40 states enacted their own DNC laws by the time the federal DNC began operation. In most cases, each state set up their own registration procedures for residents of their respective jurisdictions. During the ensuing 5 years since the federal DNC was established, all but one state (Pennsylvania) has folded their registries into the federal database. It is worth noting that the Direct [Page 208]Marketing Association, the largest telemarketing industry group, had their own do-not-call service, the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), for many years prior to establishment of the federal DNC; the likelihood is that they will follow the lead of the states, ceding their efforts to the federal DNC.

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