Comparisons of the costs and quality of patient data collection by mail versus telephone versus in-person interviews

Abstract

The costs and quality of three modes of patient data collection were compared in a survey on the quality of health care services. Nine hundred and forty-eight non-institutionalized participants from four patient categories (asthma, rheumatic diseases, disabled and dependent elderly) were divided into three different groups for the allocation of either a self-administered mail survey, a computer-assisted telephone interview or an in-person interview. The three modes were compared in terms of the total survey costs, the survey response rates and the data quality. The results show that the mail mode was the most cost-effective and yielded consistently high response rates. The telephone interviews yielded far more complete data than the other interview modes. Although in-person interviews have traditionally been considered to yield higher response rates, less non-response bias and better data quality, the results of this study show different figures in favour of mail surveys.