The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), is a nationwide household survey which is designed to provide comprehensive information on the economic situation of households and persons in the United States. This survey is one of the first Census Bureau surveys to collect information on cash and noncash income, eligibility and participation in various government transfer programs, labor force status, assets and liabilities, and many other topics on a regular basis to learn how changes in people's lives affect their economic well-being (Nelson et. al., 1985). The multistage stratified sample is drawn from the noninstitutionalized resident population of the United States. A new panel of respondents is selected every year, and is interviewed once every four months for about two and one-half years. Interviewing for the first panel in the SIPP, the 1984 Panel, began in October 1983. Beginning with the introduction of the second panel (1985 Panel) in February 1985, the SIPP has had two or three panels in the field concurrently.

Each panel is divided into four approximately equal subsamples, called "rotation groups"; one rotation group is interviewed in a given month. Thus, one cycle or "wave" of interviewing (using the same questionnaire version) usually takes four consecutive months to complete. At each interview, respondents are asked a core set of questions about their labor force and program participation activities during the previous four-month period. At Waves 2 and beyond of each panel (Waves 3 and beyond for the 1984 Panel), respondents are also asked a set of "topical module" questions which vary by wave and collect information about specific topics of interest such as marital and fertility histories, migration, annual income and taxes, and so on.

When we began the survey we felt that the only way to effectively collect the complex and sometimes sensitive SIPP data was through personal visit interviewing, and so telephone interviewing was discouraged. In fact, in the 1984 Panel at Waves 1 through 5, 95.7 percent of all SIPP interviews were conducted by personal visit , and only 4.3 percent by telephone.

With the introduction of the second and subsequent panels, the costs of conducting the SIPP began to escalate, and we started to think about telephone interviewing as a possible way to save money. With the approval and encouragement of the Office of Management and Budget, we began to pretest telephone interviewing in the SIPP in 1985.