National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052.
Aust N Z J Public Health. 2010 Oct;34(5):508-12. doi: 10.1111/j.1753-6405.2010.00598.x.
This study examines the effectiveness and costs of follow-up phone calls in improving response rates to a community survey.
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.
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.
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.
本研究旨在探讨电话随访在提高社区调查应答率方面的效果和成本。
采用随机分配的方法，将邮寄调查的未应答者分为电话随访组和无电话随访组。记录调查开发和实施过程中所使用的资源。分析应答率和每一级随访接触的成本。
与无电话随访相比，电话随访显著增加了对社区范围调查的应答数量。这种相对应答增加（随访电话组 n=62，对照组 n=1）并没有使绝对调查应答率提高到足以证明电话随访成本合理的程度（从两次邮寄调查的 38.5%提高到两次邮寄调查加电话随访的 39.8%）。情景分析表明，通过提高初始应答率 10%并进行第二次邮寄调查，比提高第二次邮寄或电话随访的应答率更能实现边际成本节约。
这些结果表明，电话随访并不具有成本效益。调查研究应主要通过使用 Cochrane 荟萃分析综述中确定的策略来获得最佳的初始应答率。
