A technological revolution in data collection

The technological development of main frame and mini computers over the last decades has had an enormous impact on social science and market research. These computers allow the analysis of large amounts of data as well as analyses which could not have been done in the past by sorting machines and calculators. The development of micro computers and other electronic technologies will affect data collection in a similar way. It will create new possibilities and will considerably reduce the amount of costs, research time and the number of people involved in the research effort. The advantages of these new procedures are not only the reduction in costs but also the possible improvement of the data quality. There is a tendency towards developing procedures for data collection which are fully automatic so that interviewers are no longer necessary. Such procedures are already in use. This paper discusses several of them. A side effect of these developments is the large amounts of data which are collected. Mostly these data are longitudinally collected. The amount of data collected in this way can be so large that new archival systems are necessary to store this information and to make quick retrieval for clients possible. Market research organizations can now offer completely new services.