Touchtone data entry (TDE) is a method used with telephone surveys to enable the respondent to directly enter information using the keypad on his or her phone rather than speaking the information to an interviewer. The technology is the same as that used extensively by financial institutions and customer service contact centers. The applications of TDE for survey research include the following:

  • As a cost-saving method where the interviewer is replaced by pre-recorded questions delivered by the computer. This is called IVR/TDE, where IVR refers to interactive voice response, and differs from IVR/ASR (automatic speech recognition) in that the latter uses speech recognition in place of TDE.
  • To reduce respondent burden when only a small amount of information is needed. For example, respondents to a quarterly business ...
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