International Food Policy Research Institute, Cairo, Egypt.
International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC, USA.
J Nutr. 2022 Oct 6;152(10):2269-2276. doi: 10.1093/jn/nxac153.
The computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) has been used extensively during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the effects of respondent fatigue during these interviews on responses to questions about diet are unknown.
We designed an experiment that randomized the placement of a survey module on the dietary diversity of rural Ethiopian women and assessed whether responses were altered by placing this module earlier or later in a phone survey.
Two CATIs were implemented; in the second, women were randomly assigned to answer questions on diet diversity either earlier or later in the interview. Women's Dietary Diversity Scores were the primary outcome. Secondary outcomes were dichotomous measures of consumption from four or more and five or more food groups and consumption of food groups consumed frequently, often, and rarely. Impacts were assessed using a respondent fixed effects model.
Delaying the food consumption module by 15 min in the interview led to an 8%-17% (P < 0.01) decrease in reported Dietary Diversity Scores, a 28% (P < 0.01) decrease in the number of women who consumed a minimum of four dietary groups, and a 40% (P < 0.01) and 11% (P < 0.01) decrease in the reporting of consumption of animal source foods and fruits and vegetables, respectively. Moving the food consumption module closer to the beginning of the interview increased the number of reported food groups consumed by older women, women with a below-median education level, and women in larger households.
Our findings suggest that comparisons of descriptive statistics across studies and countries on metrics such as food security and dietary quality may be confounded by where these modules are placed in the interview, thus highlighting trade-offs between volume of information collected and data quality when designing CATI surveys.
在 COVID-19 大流行期间，计算机辅助电话访谈（CATI）已被广泛使用，但受访者在这些访谈中疲劳对饮食问题回答的影响尚不清楚。
我们设计了一项实验，随机安排了一个关于农村埃塞俄比亚妇女饮食多样性的调查模块，并评估了将该模块更早或更晚地放在电话调查中是否会改变回答。
实施了两次 CATI；在第二次调查中，女性被随机分配在访谈中更早或更晚回答关于饮食多样性的问题。女性饮食多样性得分是主要结果。次要结果是从四个或更多食物组和五个或更多食物组以及经常、经常和很少食用的食物组中摄入食物的二分法测量。使用受访者固定效应模型评估影响。
在访谈中推迟 15 分钟的食物消费模块导致报告的饮食多样性得分降低 8%-17%（P<0.01），至少消费四个饮食组的女性数量减少 28%（P<0.01），以及动物源食品和水果和蔬菜的消费报告分别减少 40%（P<0.01）和 11%（P<0.01）。将食物消费模块移至访谈开始时，增加了报告的食用食物组数量，包括年龄较大的女性、教育水平低于中位数的女性和家庭规模较大的女性。
我们的研究结果表明，在设计 CATI 调查时，在访谈中放置这些模块的位置可能会混淆关于食品保障和饮食质量等指标的研究和国家之间的描述性统计数据的比较，从而强调了在收集信息量和数据质量之间的权衡。
