The research started from an everyday assumption: László Letenyei, associate professor at the university’s Institute of Social and Political Sciences, formulated the initial hypothesis that a phone call might be more efficient than exchanging messages. The investigation was eventually carried out by a more complex research team, which, alongside László Letenyei, included Petra Andits, an anthropologist (researcher at the Slovak Academy of Sciences) who developed the theoretical frameworks, and Bence Siófoki and Iakov Velizhanin, master’s students who conducted the experimental data collection and execution. The initial results were presented to the public on September 25 as part of Researchers’ Night. 

Theoretical framework and variables of the study 

Two communication theory frameworks were used for the background of the study:  

The researchers were curious about how the effectiveness of communication is influenced by the chosen channel, the purpose and content of the message, cultural background, gender, and individual communication channel preferences. The semi-controlled field experiment involved 18 participants, typically 20–22 years old, with Hungarian, Russian, and Central-East Asian cultural backgrounds.  

Three communication forms (text message, voice message, phone call) were combined with three different situations. In the first one, a favor was asked of the participants (e.g., to take away a left-behind bicycle), in the second one, a low-value offer (basic offer – a lower-value IKEA coupon) was offered, and in the third one, a higher-value opportunity (non-offer/non-basic offer – ballet tickets) was offered. In the experiment, the 18 participants were very consciously distributed according to a 3x3x3 factorial design (i.e., 3 communication modalities × 3 interaction goals/stories × 3 cultural backgrounds), aiming for equal (3-3-3) proportions to ensure structured data. 

Before measuring communication efficiency, it was also taken into account that success largely depends on how involved the participant feels in the topic, as well as on the properties of the medium itself. During the analysis of dependent variables, they examined, among other things, recall accuracy (recall accuracy: between 0–10 points, which was verified a few hours later using a multiple-choice questionnaire), as well as the actual duration of communication (actual duration: time elapsed until a response for text messages, between 0–200 minutes for calls) and the perceived duration. Since the duration of calls and the response time of messages are on different scales, in order to avoid distortion, the natural logarithm (ln) of the time spent on communication was used during the analysis.  

Does content or channel determine the effectiveness of communication? 

One of the initial hypotheses of the research was that the communication modality (H1) is a more decisive element of the process than the content itself. However, the initial results based on ANOVA analysis refuted this: according to the conclusion of the small-scale pilot study, the choice of channel modality is negligible in terms of effectiveness, and content proved to be the determining factor.  

Participants remembered simpler, clearer messages more accurately, whereas recall accuracy decreased in the case of communication containing more details and context. Among the three experimental situations, coupon messages stood out particularly well: many participants achieved results between 8 and 10 in this group on the ten-question test. Composite indicators regarding communication time also confirmed that the purpose and content of the message show a stronger relationship with effectiveness, while the effect of the channel proved to be much weaker.  

The future of the pilot project: a larger sample and new perspectives 

Since this is a small-scale pilot study of 18 people, the researchers emphasize that broad general conclusions cannot yet be drawn from it. The next step will be to repeat the research on a larger sample, which will also introduce a third control variable, namely age, since different generations may react differently to calls or message exchanges.  

Further data collection will help to more precisely isolate the effects of the channel, content, cultural background, and individual characteristics. In any case, the current results point in an important direction: if we want a message to hit its target and stick in the other party’s mind, the primary question is not whether we should write or call, but what and how we want to communicate.  

Written by Petra Háhner