Cellular telephones are perhaps the biggest threat to survey data that [u.s.] epidemiologists have confronted in years.

some of the problems inherent with americans’ increasingly rapid changeover to a cellular nation?

Federal law requires that calls to cellphones be hand-dialed; it is illegal to use automatic dialers, which are standard tools for survey and polling firms. Furthermore, a huge fraction of “owners” of cellphone numbers are children ineligible for the health surveys. Once reached, some cellphone users are reluctant to talk at length because they have to pay for incoming calls.

i’m usually willing to indulge a survey researcher on my landline (as a former market researcher and survey designer, i’m always interested in the instruments), but if someone wanted me to take a half hour survey on my cell? no way. and it wouldn’t just be the minutes, either – i don’t think my iphone could handle it, and still have a charge for the rest of the day.

read all about it.