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An experimental comparison of web-push vs. paper-only survey procedures for conducting an in-depth health survey of military spouses.

Publication ,  Journal Article
McMaster, HS; LeardMann, CA; Speigle, S; Dillman, DA; Millennium Cohort Family Study Team,
Published in: BMC Med Res Methodol
April 26, 2017

BACKGROUND: Previous research has found that a "web-push" approach to data collection, which involves contacting people by mail to request an Internet survey response while withholding a paper response option until later in the contact process, consistently achieves lower response rates than a "paper-only" approach, whereby all respondents are contacted and requested to respond by mail. METHOD: An experiment was designed, as part of the Millennium Cohort Family Study, to compare response rates, sample representativeness, and cost between a web-push and a paper-only approach; each approach comprised 3 stages of mail contacts. The invited sample (n = 4,935) consisted of spouses married to U.S. Service members, who had been serving in the military between 2 and 5 years as of October, 2011. RESULTS: The web-push methodology produced a significantly higher response rate, 32.8% compared to 27.8%. Each of the 3 stages of postal contact significantly contributed to response for both treatments with 87.1% of the web-push responses received over the Internet. The per-respondent cost of the paper-only treatment was almost 40% higher than the web-push treatment group. Analyses revealed no meaningfully significant differences between treatment groups in representation. CONCLUSION: These results provide evidence that a web-push methodology is more effective and less expensive than a paper-only approach among young military spouses, perhaps due to their heavy reliance on the internet, and we suggest that this approach may be more effective with the general population as they become more uniformly internet savvy.

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Published In

BMC Med Res Methodol

DOI

EISSN

1471-2288

Publication Date

April 26, 2017

Volume

17

Issue

1

Start / End Page

73

Location

England

Related Subject Headings

  • Young Adult
  • Spouses
  • Postal Service
  • Paper
  • Military Personnel
  • Male
  • Internet
  • Humans
  • Health Surveys
  • General & Internal Medicine
 

Citation

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McMaster, H. S., LeardMann, C. A., Speigle, S., Dillman, D. A., & Millennium Cohort Family Study Team, . (2017). An experimental comparison of web-push vs. paper-only survey procedures for conducting an in-depth health survey of military spouses. BMC Med Res Methodol, 17(1), 73. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-017-0337-1
McMaster, Hope Seib, Cynthia A. LeardMann, Steven Speigle, Don A. Dillman, and Don A. Millennium Cohort Family Study Team. “An experimental comparison of web-push vs. paper-only survey procedures for conducting an in-depth health survey of military spouses.BMC Med Res Methodol 17, no. 1 (April 26, 2017): 73. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-017-0337-1.
McMaster HS, LeardMann CA, Speigle S, Dillman DA, Millennium Cohort Family Study Team. An experimental comparison of web-push vs. paper-only survey procedures for conducting an in-depth health survey of military spouses. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2017 Apr 26;17(1):73.
McMaster, Hope Seib, et al. “An experimental comparison of web-push vs. paper-only survey procedures for conducting an in-depth health survey of military spouses.BMC Med Res Methodol, vol. 17, no. 1, Apr. 2017, p. 73. Pubmed, doi:10.1186/s12874-017-0337-1.
McMaster HS, LeardMann CA, Speigle S, Dillman DA, Millennium Cohort Family Study Team. An experimental comparison of web-push vs. paper-only survey procedures for conducting an in-depth health survey of military spouses. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2017 Apr 26;17(1):73.
Journal cover image

Published In

BMC Med Res Methodol

DOI

EISSN

1471-2288

Publication Date

April 26, 2017

Volume

17

Issue

1

Start / End Page

73

Location

England

Related Subject Headings

  • Young Adult
  • Spouses
  • Postal Service
  • Paper
  • Military Personnel
  • Male
  • Internet
  • Humans
  • Health Surveys
  • General & Internal Medicine