BACKGROUND Emerging communication technologies have had an impact on population-based telephone surveys worldwide. Our objective was to examine the potential biases of health estimates in South Australia, a state of Australia, obtained via current landline telephone survey methodologies and to report on the impact of mobile-only household on household surveys. METHODS Data from an annual mult...

Assessment of cognitive functioning is an important component of telephone surveys of health. Previous cognitive telephone batteries have been limited in scope with a primary focus on dementia screening. The Brief Test of Adult Cognition by Telephone (BTACT) assesses multiple dimensions central for effective functioning across adulthood: episodic memory, working memory, reasoning, verbal fluenc...

OBJECTIVES Pediatric subspecialists are not routinely reimbursed by Medicaid or insurance payers for telephone consultations. Generally, access to pediatric subspecialists is limited because of the small number of providers, their concentration in academic medical centers, and increasing demand for their services. Little is known about the nature of such consults, the time required to provide t...

OBJECTIVE To identify factors that contribute to intent to donate organs in Hispanic American individuals. DESIGN Cross-sectional telephone surveys. SETTING Four southern California neighborhoods with a high percentage of Hispanic American individuals. PATIENTS Respondents 18 years or older were drawn randomly from lists of Hispanic surnames. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Telephone surveys were...

Introduction Today, surveyors in both the private and public sectors are facing considerable challenges with random digit dialed (RDD) landline telephone samples. The population coverage rates for landline telephone surveys are being eroded by wireless-only households, portable telephone numbers, telecommunication barriers (e.g., call forwarding, call blocking and pager connections), technologi...

OBJECTIVE The authors gathered survey data regarding the use of cellular telephones among families who reside in the New York metropolitan area and whose children receive medical care in a hospital-affiliated general pediatrics clinic. METHODS Two investigators distributed a 34-question, self-administered survey in pencil-and-paper format to pediatric patients and the adults who accompanied t...

Telephone interviews and postal surveys may be a resource-efficient way of assessing health-related quality-of-life post-stroke, if they produce data equivalent to face-to-face interviews. This study explored whether telephone interviews and postal surveys of the Stroke and Aphasia Quality of Life Scale (SAQOL-39g) yielded similar results to face-to-face interviews. Participants included people...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To assess the effectiveness of a telephone reminder in increasing responses to postal surveys and to calculate the differential costs per completed questionnaire. DESIGN Randomised controlled trial. SETTING Australian university and rehabilitation medicine practice. PARTICIPANTS The trial was conducted in 1999 among the 143 non-respondents to a questionnaire about work rel...