Cellphones make health surveys more difficult to do

January 16, 2009

Ever get a call around dinnertime from people taking a survey? Lot’s of people do. One of the things people who survey call about is health – they ask questions like, How many people are overweight? How many quit smoking? and things like that.

But 1 out of 6 Americans don’t have a landline – just a cellphone. And studies show that people who have only a cellphone are different from people with landlines. And people with cellphones don’t like to use up their minutes on surveys.

Why does this matter? Until surveys learn how to include people with cellphones and those with landlines, information they report may not be accurate. We’ll have to wait and see how all this works out.