BACKGROUND Over the past decade, there have been substantial changes in landline and mobile phone ownership, with a substantial increase in the proportion of mobile-only households. Estimates of daily smoking rates for the mobile phone only (MPO) population have been found to be substantially higher than the rest of the population and telephone surveys that use a dual sampling frame (landline a...

Background: Cost effective means of assessing the levels of risk factors in the population have to be defined in order to monitor these factors over time and across populations. This study is aimed at analyzing the difference in population estimates of the mean levels of body mass index (BMI) and the prevalences of overweight, between health examination survey and telephone survey. Methods: The...

BACKGROUND Non-response in health surveys may lead to bias in estimates of health care utilisation. The magnitude, direction and composition of the bias are usually not well known. When data from health surveys are merged with data from registers at the individual level, analyses can reveal non-response bias. Our aim was to estimate the composition, direction and magnitude of non-response bias ...

CATI has been widely used in Italian surveys since the 1980s. As a matter of fact telephone interviewing, compared to traditional face-to-face data collection methods, allows to save time and money. It also offers further advantages: better control over the quality of the interview through a centralized facility, continuous monitoring and supervision, and the opportunity to include experiment-l...

AIMS Lifestyle surveys are often a key component of a local Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA), undertaken to inform public health planning. They are usually administered to a large number of people in order to provide a comprehensive profile of population health. However, declining response rates coupled with the under-representation of certain population groups in lifestyle survey data h...

Telephone surveys face more and criticism because of decreasing coverage increasing costs, the risk producing socially desirable answers. Consequently, survey administrators consider switching their to web mode, although mode is susceptible item nonresponse. Still, we do not know whether this true for all question types. In article, analyze what extent nonresponse depends on characteristics suc...