OU POLL Services

Department of Political Science | Carl Albert Center |

OU POLL Services

CATI – Telephone Interviewing

OU POLL and its staff have a great deal of experience with Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing. OU POLL uses the Interviewer software developed by Voxco in Montreal,

Canada

. Interviewer allows survey instruments to be loaded onto workstations from the server, and controls the sample of phone numbers that is meted out to telephone interviewers ready to make the next call. This robust software package allows for reporting of data at any stage during its collection, as well as monitoring of interviewers and analysis of final datasets. OU POLL is equipped to administer telephone surveys of any length to any area of the state or nation, any time of day. Interviewer, installed on OU POLL’s sixteen Dell workstations linked to a Pentium III Windows NT Server, is a comprehensive computer-assisted interviewing system that can be used in all stages of data collection and manipulation.

OU POLL also retains an interviewing staff that is comprised of students and non-students. All interviewers attend study-specific trainings before a new project begins to ensure the interviewer is well prepared to deal with issues and answer questions from respondents pertaining to the particular project when they call. Interviewers are also continuously monitored by a shift leader to ensure high quality data collection.

Focus Groups

OU POLL also offers the ability to conduct and analyze focus groups as one of its many services. Focus groups can be especially useful to explore unknown topics, develop questioning routes and to gather qualitative data on subject matter. Generally 3-4 groups are conducted with a group comprised of people that share similar characteristics, but alterations can be made depending on the client’s specific needs. The groups are asked questions beginning with very broad ones and gradually focusing on key areas of interest. The groups are recorded, exact transcriptions are made and reports are prepared when desired.

OU POLL can assist at all stages of a focus group project, from project design, recruitment of participants, focus group meeting area and facilitation (as group moderator and/or assistant), and report writing.

Mail Survey Capabilities

OU POLL offers the capability to conduct any type of survey, including mailed-out paper and pencil surveys. Utilizing the most effective researched methodologies, OU POLL pursues the highest response rate possible for clients on its mail surveys. Returned questionnaires are rapidly entered via the data entry capabilities of the Interviewer software package. Respondent tracking tools allow OU POLL to keep track of the status of each respondent case throughout all points in the research project. This allows clients up-to-date project status reports whenever requested. All phases of the mail survey process; questionnaire design and formatting, mail out and log in, data entry, data delivery, and report writing, are conducted in-house at the OU POLL.