Abstract
BackgroundAccurate monitoring of health conditions and behaviours, and health service usage in the population, using an effective and economical method is important for planning and evaluation. This study examines the reliability of questions asked in a telephone survey by conducting a test/retest analysis of a range of questions covering demographic variables, health risk factors and self-reported chronic conditions among people aged 16 years and over.MethodsA Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) survey on health issues of South Australians was re-administered to a random sub-sample of 154 respondents between 13-35 days (mean 17) after the original survey. Reliability between questions was assessed using Cohen’s kappa and intraclass correlation coefficients.ResultsDemographic questions (age, gender, number of adults and children in the household, country of birth) showed extremely high reliability (0.97 to 1.00). Health service use (ICC = 0.90 95% CI 0.86-0.93) and overall health status (Kappa = 0.60 95% CI 0.46-0.75) displayed moderate agreement. Questions relating to self-reported risk factors such as smoking (Kappa = 0.81 95% CI 0.72-0.89) and alcohol drinking (ICC 0.75 = 95% CI 0.63-0.83) behaviour showed good to excellent agreement, while questions relating to self-reported risk factors such as time spent walking for physical activity (ICC 0.47 = 95% CI 0.27-0.61), fruit (Kappaw = 0.60 95% CI 0.45-0.76) and vegetable consumption (Kappaw = 0.50 95% CI 0.32-0.69) showed only moderate agreement. Self-reported chronic conditions displayed substantial to almost perfect agreement (0.72 to 1.00) with the exception of moderate agreement for heart disease (Kappa = 0.82 95% CI 0.57-0.99).ConclusionThese results show the questions assessed to be reliable in South Australia for estimating health conditions and monitoring health related behaviours using a CATI survey.
Highlights
Accurate monitoring of health conditions and behaviours, and health service usage in the population, using an effective and economical method is important for planning and evaluation
Overall n = 626 respondents participated in South Australian Monitoring and Surveillance System (SAMSS) in November 2009, with n = 495 (89.8%) of the people aged 16 years and over (n = 551) willing to be recontacted
Overall health status displayed a moderate agreement beyond chance but the observed agreement was 85.8%, which indicated that the kappa statistic was affected by the low proportion reporting ‘poor’ health
Summary
Accurate monitoring of health conditions and behaviours, and health service usage in the population, using an effective and economical method is important for planning and evaluation. This study examines the reliability of questions asked in a telephone survey by conducting a test/retest analysis of a range of questions covering demographic variables, health risk factors and self-reported chronic conditions among people aged 16 years and over. Data used in the planning and monitoring of health services and disease prevalence in populations should be as accurate as possible and assessing the reliability of questions is one way that accuracy or precision of the questions can be assessed and bias minimised. The reliability tests of the BRFSS questionnaires have addressed a range of demographic variables and health risk factors, as well as specific issues such as ethnic monitories and women's health [6]. Knowledge or attitudinal variables were found to have lower reliability [2]
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