The advantages of telephone surveys would be negated if telephone subscribers were not representative of total populations, including nonsubscribers. Surprisingly, the literature on this subject is somewhat limited. A study was done to ascertain whether there are any important differences between telephone subscribers and nonsubscribers. From a combination of NORC surveys, analysis of more than 7500 respondents shows that, in most cases, less than 2% of the responses on a single item of a telephone sample will differ from equivalent responses of a sample of the total population.
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