Referral Protocols for Achieving Gender Representation in Random Digit Dial Phone Surveys

In many applications of empirical economics, sample frames are not available, so random digit dial (RDD) surveys are the only feasible method for obtaining telephone survey data. This creates a challenge when the study seeks to focus on or disaggregate data to a particular demographic group, such as adult women. In most Low- and Middle- Income Countries (LMIC), cellphone ownership is skewed towards men (Forenbacher et al., 2019). This impedes the ability to obtain gender-representative samples in RDD surveys. A survey that relies on women to own and use mobile phones may systematically exclude women who rely on other household members, such as a spouse, to use a mobile phone. On the other hand, a survey that relies on men's willingness to pass the phone to a female household member may systematically exclude women in households with specific cultural gender norms such as those that discourage women's self-expression. In both cases, there is insufficient published data to determine which method would yield the highest response rate, reduce coverage bias, and be most cost effective.

This trial seeks to test the hypothesis that rapport-building can increase the number of women and diversify the types of women who will take and complete an RDD survey when referred by a male household member. Specifically, we test how referral and screening designs produce samples of women. We consider the impacts of these referral protocol choices on not only completions and response rates, but on sample composition and on inferences of interest from the survey data themselves to balance potential bias-variance tradeoffs.