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Mobile phones are a viable option for surveying young Australian women: a comparison of two telephone survey methods
Bette Liu1*, Julia ML Brotherton2, David Shellard3, Basil Donovan14, Marion Saville2 and John M Kaldor1
* Corresponding author: Bette Liu bliu@kirby.unsw.edu.au
Author Affiliations
1 The Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
2 Victorian Cytology Service, Melbourne, Australia
3 The Hunter Valley Research Foundation, Newcastle, Australia
4 Sydney Sexual Health Centre, Sydney Hospital, Sydney, Australia
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BMC Medical Research Methodology 2011, 11:159 doi:10.1186/1471-2288-11-159
The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/11/159
Received: 13 September 2011
Accepted: 24 November 2011
Published: 24 November 2011
© 2011 Liu et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Background
Households with fixed-line telephones have decreased while mobile (cell) phone ownership has increased. We therefore sought to examine the feasibility of recruiting young women for a national health survey through random digit dialling mobile phones.
Methods
Two samples of women aged 18 to 39 years were surveyed by random digit dialling fixed and mobile numbers. We compared participation rates and responses to a questionnaire between women surveyed by each contact method.
Results
After dialling 5,390 fixed-lines and 3,697 mobile numbers, 140 and 128 women were recruited respectively. Among women contacted and found to be eligible, participation rates were 74% for fixed-lines and 88% for mobiles. Taking into account calls to numbers where eligibility was unknown (e.g. unanswered calls) the estimated response rates were 54% and 45% respectively. Of women contacted by fixed-line, 97% reported having a mobile while 61% of those contacted by mobile reported having a fixed-line at home. After adjusting for age, there were no significant differences between mobile-only and fixed-line responders with respect to education, residence, and various health behaviours; however compared to those with fixed-lines, mobile-only women were more likely to identify as Indigenous (OR 4.99, 95%CI 1.52-16.34) and less likely to live at home with their parents (OR 0.09, 95%CI 0.03-0.29).
Conclusions
Random digit dialling mobile phones to conduct a health survey in young Australian women is feasible, gives a comparable response rate and a more representative sample than dialling fixed-lines only. Telephone surveys of young women should include mobile dialling.
Keywords: Cellular phone; mobile phone; telephone surveys; survey methods; HPV vaccine
Background
Random digit dialling fixed telephone lines (landlines) is commonly used by health researchers to access a representative sample of the population for survey purposes. In Australia, given the large geographic distances and the high coverage of fixed-lines, it has been the method of choice [1,2]. However in recent years, in line with international trends, there has been a gradual decrease in the number of households with fixed-line telephones, particularly among young adults [3-6]. This has led to concerns regarding the representativeness of populations sampled by this method [7]. In parallel there has been a dramatic increase in the ownership and use of mobile phones,[3,6] yet despite this shift, there is very limited information on random digit dialling mobile phones to contact participants for population surveys [5]. To inform the design of a national survey of reproductive health in young women, we conducted a pilot study examining the feasibility of random digit dialling mobile phones and compared characteristics of women surveyed by this method with a separate sample of women surveyed by random digit dialling fixed-lines.
Methods
We recruited two groups, each consisting of at least 100 women, by random digit dialling fixed-line household numbers and mobile numbers. Women were eligible for the survey if they were aged 18-39 years and able to communicate verbally in English. Telephone numbers were randomly generated and dialled. If a fixed-line was answered, the respondent was asked whether there was an eligible woman in the household, and if so, she was invited to participate in the survey. For mobiles, if the call was answered, and the recipient was an eligible woman, they were asked to take part. The survey was 5-10 minutes long (for full questionnaire see additional file 1) and included questions on human papillomavirus (HPV) immunisation, past diagnoses of genital warts and chlamydia testing and treatment. The survey also sought information on whether the participant had a mobile phone if recruited by fixed-line, or if they had a fixed-line telephone at home if recruited by mobile.
Additional file 1. Telephone survey questionnaire. Questions that study participants were asked in the telephone survey.
Format: DOC Size: 94KB Download file
This file can be viewed with: Microsoft Word ViewerOpen Data
For households contacted by fixed-line, preference was given to women aged 21-39 years over those aged 18-20, and if there were still more than one, random selection was used. Sampling was stratified by age, to recruit women 21-30 years old and 31-39 years in a ratio of 3:1, and state of residence, to recruit women in similar proportions to the geographic distribution of young women in Australia. Age stratification was required to ensure adequate power for pre-specified comparisons in the larger study. There was no pre-defined quota for women aged 18-20 years and they were included if their number was randomly dialled and no women aged 21-39 were available.
The selection process for fixed-line and mobile numbers was similar. Lists of currently active numbers were selected from the White Pages telephone book and modified by random terminal digit substitution to generate sets of numbers with proportional national distributions of number prefixes. Following number selection, a maximum of six calls were made to establish contact and a maximum of five more to complete the survey if there was an eligible person at the number. The survey was conducted using a standardised script and a Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) program. The outcome of every number called and responses to all survey questions were recorded. Both groups were surveyed by trained interviewers.
We compared call and survey responses between the two contact methods. Each number dialled was categorised as either 'eligible' (contact was in the target sex and age group), 'ineligible' (contact was incorrect sex or age, or had difficulty with English), 'unknown eligible' (answering machine/voicemail, no answer, refusal before eligibility determined) or 'invalid' (business, fax, disconnected). Two call response rates were calculated by dividing the number of interviews completed by: i) the number of 'eligible' calls; and ii) the number of 'eligible' calls plus a proportion of the 'unknown eligible' calls estimated to be eligible. The proportion of 'unknown eligible calls' estimated to be eligible was derived by using the population where eligibility was known and dividing all 'eligible' calls by all 'eligible' and 'ineligible' calls. For each main survey question we compared the response between the two groups (fixed-line and mobile) using logistic regression, adjusted for participant age. The study was approved by the University of New South Wales Human Research Ethics Committee.
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