| Q: |
What percentage of households in the SLC states use only cell phones? |
| A: |
Background:A recent report by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) of the Center of Disease Control (CDC) noted that Southern states comprised six of the top ten U.S. states with the highest percentages of wireless-only households. Most major survey research organizations in the U.S., including NCHS, traditionally have not included cell phone numbers when conducting random-digit-dial telephone surveys. The exclusion of households with only cell phones has implications on the results of health surveys, political polls, and other research conducted using random-digit-dial methods, and remains an obstacle to the acquisition of accurate statistics. Therefore, the study is sure to be watched closely by telecommunications companies trying to better understand state and local markets, and by government, academic and commercial survey researchers using telephone polling to monitor health trends, politics and more. The CDC, blending its own 2007 survey data with census updates, found the prevalence of cell-only households varies widely by state – sometimes within regions and even between neighboring states. This is tied to differences by state in demographic indicators known to predict wireless-only ownership, especially being young and renting rather than owning a home. The study's lead author, Stephen Blumberg, senior scientist at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, noted that the data are from 2007 and all signs indicate people keep substituting cell phones for landlines at a steady pace. Judging from the results of the study, the shift toward cell-phone only households appears to be most prevalent in the South. For example, Oklahoma with over one in four households using only cell phones, had the highest percentage of wireless-only households in the nation.
Sources: |
