Survey Research Methods Section Newsletter: Winter 1995-1996

InterCASIC 96 isn't far off ! A call for contributed papers is out -- for updated information on latest SRM-sponsored International Conference on survey methodology, see below.

SRM is going electronic! The SRMSNET is well underway -- see page 6 -- and we ll soon be on the World Wide Web, as well -- see below. Help us as we move towards the 21st century!

1996 JSM in the Windy City
As you surely know by now, the 1996 Joint Statistical Meetings will be held in Chicago, IL, August 4-8, 1996. The SRM Program is already shaping up for the occasion. The Section has been awarded 6 invited paper sessions:

• Time Series Analysis -- Topics in Seasonality and Cointegration
• Survey Analysis in the Presence of Imputed Data
• Methods Used in Generalized Systems for Survey Processing
• New Directions in Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) Research
• After the Revolution: Improving the Use of Cognitive Methods in Survey Research
• Metadata: The Last Dimension of Survey Research.

SRM Joins the World Wide Web
SRM is pleased to announce that this Spring it will become one of the first Sections to join ASA at their new Web site. The Council of Sections, with practically unanimous support from the Sections, has established an Internet node at ASA on the World Wide Web. As part of that effort, SRM is developing its own home page; right now you can reach the ASA Web site by accessing http://www.amstat.org/.

The SRM home page is now being finalized and both suggestions and assistance are very welcome. As it stands now, the SRM Web page will include the following items:

• Mission statement -- with logo (currently being revised);
• Section officers -- including contact information and possible links to their own Web pages;
• Minutes from the last Executive Committee meeting;
• SRM Newsletter -- complete text, plus graphics and illustrations, if feasible;
• SRM pamphlets from the What Is a Survey? series;
• SRMSNET description and subscription instructions;
• Journals -- brief descriptions and links to WWW pages for Survey Methodology and the Journal of Official Statistics.

• Preview of the upcoming SRM program for the Joint Statistical Meetings;
• Upcoming conferences and short courses -- information on availability, scope, etc., of SRM-related events;
• Surveys and Privacy brochure -- a link can be provided to the ASA Committee on Privacy and Confidentiality s Web page, which will contain this brochure of theirs.

What Is a Survey?
By now all Section members should have received the first three brochures in the newly updated series on survey methodology -- What Is a Survey? How to Plan a Survey, and How to Collect Survey Data. (Additional copies are available from the ASA Office for $.50 each.) The series is aimed at improving survey literacy for individuals who participate in surveys or use survey results. By promoting an understanding of what is involved in carrying out sample surveys of human populations, hopefully, the series will lead to more and better uses of survey data.

Several more pamphlets in the series are now in the works. They include: Judging the Quality of a Survey; What Are Focus Groups? More About Mail Surveys; How To Conduct Pretesting; What Is a Margin of Error? and What About Surveys in the Media? The Section would like to continue to produce relevant additions to the series on other topics, in the years ahead. Suggestions for potential future topics -- as well as offers to help in this effort -- are welcome!

These pamphlets are intended to be a work in progress. Your feedback has been invaluable and continues to be needed. Please pass along any suggestions for improving the brochures to Fritz Scheuren at George Washington University -- phone: (202) 994-6358; fax: (202) 994-6917; or e-mail: scheuren@aol.com.

InterCASIC 96
Dreaming of a warm weather getaway....? InterCASIC 96 is coming to San Antonio, Texas December 11-14, 1996! The International Conference on Computer-Assisted Survey Information Collection (CASIC) is the sixth in a series of meetings on survey methodology organized and co-sponsored by the Survey Research Methods Section. The focus is being broadly defined to include general applications of computer technology to the entire process of collection, capture, and preparation of survey data.

The Organizing Committee is now soliciting abstracts for contributed papers and proposals for live demonstrations. (See Call for Papers on page 7 for specific details.) Suggested topics for papers include:

• Instrument design for computer-assisted interviewing -- programming/authoring issues; navigation, rostering; testing, debugging instruments; and accessing external data files;
• Automated survey management systems -- field and office management systems; coding, cleaning, and data entry; and call scheduling and sample management;
• Data quality issues -- nonresponse, coverage, and measurement errors;
• Hardware/systemware -- durability and reliability of CAPI hardware; operating systems; and LAN management;
• New technologies in survey research -- impact of future technologies on data collection; going beyond paper-and-pencil equivalence; GIS, audio-CASI, fax, VRE, and TDE; and handwriting recognition and pen computing;
• Organizational aspects of CASIC -- costs; staffing, planning, and managing CAI surveys; and making the switch to automation; and
• Interviewers and respondents -- human-computer interaction issues; hiring, training of interviewers; evaluating interviewers, monitoring performance; and respondent reactions.

For more information on the conference, itself, contact Mick Couper -- phone: (301) 405- 9523; fax: (301) 314-7912; or e-mail: mcouper@survey.umd.edu -- or Lee Decker -- phone: (703) 684-1221 x 145; fax: (703) 684-8069; or e-mail: lee@amstat.org. See, also, the World Wide Web page at http://www.wam.umd.edu/~jpsm/casic.html .

Treasurer s Report
The SRM treasury remains quite healthy. As of June 30, 1995, we had cash on hand of $34,394. Our largest source of revenue is from the Proceedings, as is the largest portion of our expenses. We have also set aside monies to cover publication of the pamphlets in the What Is a Survey? series and to serve as seed money for the InterCASIC 96 conference in San Antonio. Meanwhile, we continue to receive revenue from past conferences sponsored by the Section. Our dues -- at $2.00 a year -- remain among the lowest available. Membership figures for the Section were 1,424, as of September 30, 1995.

List-Assisted Telephone Surveys Short Course Planned
The ASA Committee on Continuing Education has approved a short course on List-Assisted Telephone Surveys: Design, Estimation and Administration, to be offered at the 1996 Joint Statistical Meetings. The course, to be taught by Robert Casady, Bureau of Labor Statistics; James Lepkowski, University of Michigan; and Clyde Tucker, Bureau of Labor Statistics, is the first SRM-sponsored short course to be offered in a few years.

The course will examine sample design and estimation issues for an expanding class of surveys by telephone -- list-assisted telephone sample surveys. Many telephone sampling methods have been employed, with samples being selected either from lists of available telephone numbers or by randomly generating numbers from the conceptual set of all possible telephone numbers. Most list samples have severe coverage problems, while random digit dialing methods have substantial inefficiencies, due to the large number of sample elements that are not working residential telephone numbers. List-assisted telephone sample designs use a list of telephone numbers as a basis for stratifying the conceptual set of all possible telephone numbers; thus, design efficiency is substantially improved, while desirable coverage properties are maintained.

The course will present basic features of list samples, random digit dialing methods, and list- assisted techniques. Several specific design options for list-assisted samples will be considered in detail, including two-stage sampling from directory listings, stratified sample selection from partitioned sets of telephone numbers, optimum allocation of samples across strata, and truncated sample designs. Such estimation topics as nonresponse adjustment and post-stratification will also be addressed. Finally, administrative aspects of sample selection will be covered, as well.

The course is aimed at survey researchers, survey practitioners, and graduate students with prior training or experience in the general area of sample surveys. For more information, look for details in the JSM Preregistration Packet, to be sent out in late Spring by ASA.

Waksberg Wins Herriot Award!
Congratulations go out to Joseph Waksberg, Westat, Inc., who became the first recipient of the Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics! The Award, sponsored by the Social Statistics Section, Government Statistics Section, and the Washington Statistical Society, recognized Waksberg for his recent contributions to improving procedures for rare populations, methods for random digit dialing, and understanding of recall error.

Nominations are now being sought for the 1996 Herriot Award. The award honors individuals who develop unique approaches to the solution of statistical problems in Federal data collection programs. It is intended to reflect the special characteristics of Roger Herriot s career --

• Dedication to the issues of measurement;
• Improvement in the efficiency of data collection programs; and
• Improvement and use of statistical data for policy analysis.

Nine New Fellows!
Nine Section members were inducted as Fellows of the American Statistical Association at the 1995 Joint Statistical Meetings in Orlando. Hearty congratulations go out to Susan W. Ahmed, Kenneth R. Brewer, Brenda G. Cox, Don A. Dillman, Ralph E. Folsom, Richard John Kryscio, Richard F. Potthoff, Keith F. Rust, and Tommy Wright!

Many thanks to Cathryn Dippo (Chair) and the SRM Committee on ASA Fellows for their efforts on behalf of our outstanding Section members.

New Report on Electronic Data
The Office of Management and Budget s Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology has just released the latest in its Statistical Policy Working Paper series of reports on issues of data quality affecting Federal statistics. The report -- Statistical Policy Working Paper 24: Electronic Dissemination of Statistical Data -- summarizes the current state-of-the-art in electronic dissemination of Federal statistical data available for public use. While the report is intended to serve as an aid to statistical agency managers in decision-making about electronic dissemination of publicly-available statistical data, it contains an agency-by-agency summary of current practice, in the Appendix, which might be especially of interest to the survey research community, as a whole.

The 87-page report is available in both hardcopy and electronic versions. For more information on obtaining this or other reports in the series, see the next article.

Statistical Policy Working Papers Now On-Line
The Office of Management and Budget s Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology is pleased to announce that its Statistical Policy Working Paper series of reports on issues of data quality affecting Federal statistics is now available in electronic format. The first 22 reports (see the box) can be accessed via the Internet at http://www.bts.gov/statistical policy. Reports Numbers 23: Seminar on New Directions in Statistical Methodology (1995) and 24: Electronic Dissemination of Statistical Data (1995) will be added to this collection shortly.

At this time, most of the tabular and graphical information from the original works only appear in hardcopy form. However, the National Science Foundation has produced an Adobe "Acrobat" version of Report No. 24, which will contain the original graphics. This report can be found at http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/stats.htm. (For information on obtaining hardcopy versions of these reports, contact M. Denice McCormick Myers -- phone: (202) 690-0922; fax: (202) 720-8738; or e-mail: dmmyers@nass.usda.gov.)

FTC Hosts Privacy Discussion Group On-Line
The Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection has established a Privacy Principles Mailing List as a forum for discussing the privacy principles that should be applicable to consumers' use of the Global Information Infrastructure. The Bureau seeks commentary and resource materials from consumers, industry, privacy advocates, and others who are concerned about questions such as the following:

• What information is routinely gathered on-line now, and what is industry doing with this information? How will the nature of the information gathered or the uses to which it is put change in the next few years?
• What control should consumers have over personal and transactional information?
• How should consumers be able to exercise that control?
• What expectations do consumers have regarding the use of information about them?
• What are the respective obligations of on-line service providers, content providers, and consumers, themselves, to address these privacy concerns?
• Should certain uses of information be off limits without the consumer's explicit consent?
• Under what circumstances should consumers have the ability to access and correct information about themselves?

Looking Ahead -- Your Input is Needed Now!
It is not too early to start planning for the 1997 Joint Statistical Meetings, which will be held in Anaheim, CA, August 10-14, 1997. The first decisions on invited paper sessions for the 1997 JSM will be made at the meeting of the Program Committee in Chicago this August. If you have any ideas for topics or would like to organize a session, please contact Mary Mulry, the Section s 1997 Program Chair. Remember, the more complete the material she can present, the better.

Steve Miller, Chair of the SRM Tutorial Committee, is also looking for your ideas. He is actively seeking suggestions for short courses for the Anaheim meetings. We are interested in both new techniques and more general presentations of current methods. Some of you may have been discouraged by past problems with short courses which were canceled at the last minute. A recent change in policy by ASA now permits the Sections to subsidize under- subscribed short courses which they wish to sponsor. So, do give us a try again -- we would like to see the Section become a bigger part of the ASA Continuing Education program...

Statistical Methodology at Work
When Canadians in Quebec Province went to the polls last Fall to vote whether to secede from Canada and establish a separate French Canada, many of us watched the results with much interest. The results were an extremely close vote, with 50.6% voting not to secede from Canada and 49.4% voting in favor of a separate French Canada. Derek Leebosh, AAPORNET s Canadian correspondent, commented on the methodology which led polling companies to almost unanimously predict a dead heat in such a hotly contested election -- and that is exactly what happened!

Leebosh noted that all of the polls gave the yes side a lead of between four and seven points among decided voters, with yes hovering around 47-48% and no around 40-41%. However, all companies forecasted a dead heat, because they all used formulas to allocate the undecideds on a disproportionate basis. Among their assumptions were that undecided voters would be inclined to err on the side of caution on an issue of such great consequence -- caution, in this case, being the status quo; that the undecided voters tended to be among groups that were more likely to vote no -- such as women and older people; and that French speakers may have responded to pollsters with politically correct yes votes, when, in fact, they were intending to vote no, leading to slightly inflated yes counts during the final days of the campaign. Leebosh concluded that, in this election, it was the pollsters who clearly won!

Reminder...
Remember, all presenters must submit a draft by June 1, 1996, in order to remain on the program. A lot of effort goes into developing interesting and homogeneous sessions and trying to minimize the subject matter and person conflicts which inevitably arise. Please bear in mind that withdrawing a paper after it has been scheduled often upsets the delicate balance which has been achieved. This is a particularly serious problem when papers are withdrawn after the program has gone to press. So, if you have submitted an abstract for the Chicago meetings, try to keep your research on track and the Program Chair -- Cathy Dippo -- informed.

SRMSNET is Up and Running!
The SRMSNET went on-line this past summer, thanks to the efforts of Bob Groves and the Maryland/Michigan/Westat Joint Program in Survey Methodology. Since July 1995, 126 subscribers have signed up and 21 messages have been sent out, including the text of the last SRM Newsletter.

Needless to say, we are a little disappointed with the limited use of the bulletin board that we've seen so far. The intent was for the SRMSNET to be an active vehicle for communication of such topics as:

• Upcoming events of interest to Section members;
• Job openings and award opportunities;
• Research questions;
• Other items of general interest to Section members.