Call Scheduling Issue

One of the issues that I'm facing in my experiment with call scheduling on the telephone survey is the decision to truncate effort. Typically, we have a policy that says something like call a case 12 times in 3 different call windows (6 in one, 4 in another, and 2 in the last). Those calls must occur on 12 different days. If those calls are made and none of them achieve contact (including an answering machine), we assume that further effort will not produce any result. We finalize the case as a Noncontact. We call this our "grid" procedure (since the paper coversheets that we use to use tracked the procedure in a grid). It counts against AAPOR RR2. A portion (the famous "e") of each such case counts against AAPOR RR4.

My algorithm did not regard this algorithm. Assuming the model favored one window every day, then the requirements of the grid would never be met. It sounds to me like a failure to sufficiently explore other policies, but it could happen.

In any event, as a safeguard, I added to the experiment. The experimental group will now direct cases to attempt other call windows if, after 6 calls, not a single contact has been made. This modification began just this month. We'll see how it goes...

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Tailoring vs. Targeting

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