Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), 1991

Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), 1991

Surveys conducted via the landline telephone became the norm in mass survey research with the advent of RDD methodology. Beginning in the 1970s, with sufficient coverage of landline telephones across the United States, the cheaper cost of contacting respondents over the phone meant that researchers could more quickly and efficiently complete their work. (For a discussion of these developments, see the 2007 special issue of Public Opinion Quarterly on telephone surveying.) Thus began the heyday of the RDD poll, which extended through the 1980s and into the 1990s.

To make telephone ...