HOUSEHOLD TELEPHONE SERVICE AND USAGE PATTERNS IN THE U.S. IN 2004

Abstract

1. Background The percentage of households in the U.S. with a telephone is an important determinant of coverage in random digit dial (RDD) telephone surveys and also affects the efficiency of using the telephone as a mode of data collection in household surveys. In earlier years, RDD coverage issues were mainly concerned with households without phones because having a telephone in the household was nearly equivalent to having landline telephone service. As the percentage of households with only cell phones has increased, the difference between not having any telephone service and not having a landline is more important since virtually all RDD samples are selected from telephone exchanges that exclude cell phones. Members of households that have only cell phones are not covered under this traditional sampling procedure. In the last few years, cell phones have become vastly more popular and the ability to assess the number and characteristics of households by the type of telephone service is limited. Tuckel and O’Neil (2004) report on cell phone ownership between 2000 and 2003. In 2003, the National Center for Health Statistics added items to its National Health Interview Survey that address this question. The initial results from the first half of 2003 are presented in Blumberg, Luke, and Cynamon (2004).