Description:

In addition to traditional live interview polling, POS conducts IVR+ polling, which is traditional interactive voice response (IVR) research, with added quota and sample management.  Like a traditional IVR survey, IVR+ uses pre-recorded questions that respondents answer using their telephone keypad.  With the quota and sample management, our IVR+ survey option allows for strict age, gender, region, and ethnicity quotas to be put on our dialing to ensure that the poll is demographically sound and representative of the overall population.  This is different than traditional IVR polling, where significant weighting is often done in order to create a representative sample.

We often supplement the IVR polls with live cell phone interviews, as IVR surveys can only be conducted on landlines.  This ensures that voters who only use cell phones are included in the survey, which is particularly important since the number of wireless only households continues to grow each year.

Logistics:

IVR+ surveys are typically in the field between 2-4 days, depending on the sample size and geography.  Since IVR+ surveys have a maximum length of about 5-6 minutes of questions, they are best for conducting shorter brushfire surveys.

We have also utilized the IVR+ methodology to conduct “rapid response” one-night polling.  Since much of the interviewing is conducted using IVR technology rather than live interviewers, it is possible to conduct large-scale surveys in a shorter timeframe.

Applications:

Applications for IVR+ surveys include:

• Completing more cost-effective research for projects with a limited budget
• Providing a quick interim snapshot of a campaign or issue in-between larger, more robust surveys for projects with a limited budget
• Conducting “rapid response” polling
• Collecting data for large-scale modeling projects when thousands of interviews are required