College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

Iowa State calling

Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology conducts phone interviews for a variety of clients.
Sure they sit in little cubicles.

And many times they will be calling randomly selected phone numbers in an effort to catch someone at home.

But whatever you do, don't confuse what Dianne Anderson and her staff do in the Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology with telemarketers.

"It takes a special person to do what we do," said Anderson, the Center's assistant director and coordinator of grant development.

Among other things, Anderson says a phone researcher needs to make the person on the other end of the phone comfortable.

"You have to be an excellent listener, to hear what people tell you and what they don't," Anderson said. "You have to be able to think on your feet, be flexible and patient, and project a certain level of professionalism and maturity."

Phone research takes a special type of individual because instead of trying to sell individuals new windows or refinancing, they are engaged in far more important work.

The Center, which is under the auspices of the Vice Provost for Research and whose faculyt are affiliated with the Department of Statistics, has extensive experience in a wide variety of scientific areas, and has conducted surveys on topics in agriculture, health, welfare reform, family studies, economic development, natural resource conservation and education.

Clients have included major educational institutions throughout the nation, state and local agencies, and federal funding agencies.

A recent study was conducted for the Mayo Clinic, which is looking at the epidemiology and genetics of Parkinson's disease.

Anderson says that this study was different from the typical project the Center works on.

"The Mayo Clinic selected 368 Parkinson's patients for their study. We had to conduct phone interviews with individuals who lived in the same regions as the Parkinson's patients, so that Mayo could compare that control group of healthy individuals with those that had the disease," she said.

In order to do that, Anderson's team had to conduct screening interviews with over 4000 households to locate over 1200 control respondents, calling as many as 9000 phone numbers.

These were all cold calls but Anderson said that despite that, those being surveyed were generally cooperative.

The information collected for surveys such as the Mayo Clinic’s Parkinson's request makes it worthwhile she said.

"I can remember a lengthy and detailed interview we once did for the University of Iowa on birth defects and both the respondent and the interviewer felt that it was an especially important and meaningful survey," Anderson said. "These are highly trained researchers and Iowa State has developed a good reputation for conducting this type of research."

Still it is becoming more and more difficult for the Center to conduct this type of research. Blame that on technology and telemarketers.

"Caller ID and call screeners have made our job more difficult especially for random digital dialing surveys like the Mayo Clinic one where we are just randomly calling without any prior notification," Anderson said. "But if we can connect with an individual they will, by and large, want to help out and complete the survey."