- Title
- Cost-effectiveness of follow-up contact for a postal survey: a randomised controlled trial
- Creator
- Breen, Courtney L.; Shakeshaft, Anthony P.; Doran, Christopher M.; Sanson-Fisher, Rob W.; Mattick, Richard P.
- Relation
- Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health Vol. 34, Issue 5, p. 508-512
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1753-6405.2010.00598.x
- Publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Asia
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2010
- Description
- Objective: This study examines the effectiveness and costs of follow-up phone calls in improving response rates to a community survey. Methods: Non-responders to a postal survey were randomly allocated to receive a phone call or no phone call. The resources used for the development and implementation of the survey were documented. The response rates and cost per level of follow-up contact examined. Results: Follow-up phone calls led to a statistical significant increase in the number of responses to a community-wide survey, relative to no phone call. This relative increase in responses (n=62 for the follow-up phone call group versus n=1 for controls), did not increase the absolute survey response rate sufficiently (from 38.5% for two mailed surveys to 39.8% for two mailed surveys plus a phone call) to justify the phone call costs. Scenario analyses show increasing the initial response rate by 10% and conducting a second mailed survey achieves greater marginal cost savings than increasing the response rate to the second mailout or the follow-up phone calls. Conclusions: These results suggest a follow-up phone call was not cost effective. Survey research ought to primarily focus on obtaining optimal initial response rates by using strategies identified in a Cochrane meta-analytic review.
- Subject
- response rate; non response; survey; follow up; cost; randomised controlled trial
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/930766
- Identifier
- uon:10918
- Identifier
- ISSN:1326-0200
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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