Respondents’ Attitudes toward Legitimate Surveys in Four Cities

Abstract

Market and opinion survey researchers are increasingly troubled because some door-to-door salesmen ask for an interview as a sales presentation door-opener. It is widely felt that this gambit is making it increasingly difficult for legitimate survey interviewers to obtain interviews and is damaging the profession's public relations. This problem was the topic of a 1964 symposium sponsored by the American Association for Public Opinion Research [7]. Similar solicitations by telephone are also a problem [4]. Baxter [2] using 1963 data reported that 31 percent of respondents in cities over 100,000 reported such sales approaches, of which 47 percent were in person. Biel [3] recently reported the startling figure that 60 percent of respondents in a Chicago sample said they had been approached at least once, 52 percent twice or more, by telephone or in person with a request for an interview that later proved to be a sales attempt. No doubt partly because of this practice and other frequent door-to-door commercial canvassing more direct in sales approach, many communities have imposed legal controls over interviewing activity ranging from interviewer registration with the police to prohibitions on any door-to-door calling. Arnold [1] reported that 250 communities in 34 states imposed a variety of controls on interviewing activity. The prevalence of such controls has likely been caused by response to rising complaints to police, better business bureaus, and chambers of commerce about abuses in commerical