Abstract
Objective: To assess whether a mixed-mode survey design reduced bias and enhanced methods commonly used to correct for bias (poststratification weighting). Study Design and Setting: The data for this paper are from a study of 1,900 adult patients enrolled in a randomized controlled trial to promote repeat treatment for relapsed smokers at five Veteran's Affairs Medical Centers. A sequential mixed-mode design was used for data collection whereby the initial attempt was conducted using phone administration, with mail follow-up for nonresponders. Analyses examined demographic, health, and smoking cessation treatment seeking differences between telephone responders, mail responders, and nonresponders and compared the relative effectiveness of global vs. targeted poststratification weighting adjustments for correcting for response bias. Results: The findings suggest (1) that responders to the additional survey mode (mail) did not significantly differ from responders to the first mode (phone) or nonresponders and (2) that poststratification weighting adjustments that take this additional information into account perform better than the standard global adjustments. Conclusions: A mixed-mode design can improve survey representativeness and enhance the performance of poststratification weighting adjustments.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1246-1255 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Journal of Clinical Epidemiology |
Volume | 60 |
Issue number | 12 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 2007 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Funding was provided by the Veterans Administration Health Services Research and Development Service (grant TRX 01-080) to the Center for Chronic Disease Outcomes Research, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Minneapolis, MN. The views expressed in this manuscript are the authors' and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Keywords
- Mailed survey
- Mixed-mode survey
- Nonresponse bias
- Poststratification weighting
- Smoking cessation
- Telephone survey