Computer-assisted Telephone Interview Survey Research Articles

Does continuity of care increase HMO patients' satisfaction with physician performance?

This study describes the relation between patient satisfaction with physician performance and seeing one's "own doctor" for a recent office visit. A cross-sectional, randomized, computer-assisted telephone interview survey was performed at an urban health maintenance organization; 1146 responses were analyzed. Patients seeing their own physicians were significantly more satisfied than patients seeing another physician, even after controlling for effects of patient age, sex, reason for visit, clinic attended, satisfaction with appointment making, and interval between scheduling and making the visit. The interaction between getting one's choice of provider and seeing one's own physician was a significant predictor of satisfaction (P = 0.003). Among patients who got their choice of provider, seeing one's own physician had a more significant effect on satisfaction than seeing any other physician (P = 0.0009 compared with P = 0.04). Patients who did not receive their choice of provider but who did see their own physician had the highest satisfaction scores (P = 0.007). To increase patient satisfaction with physician performance, health maintenance organizations should ensure that patients see their "own doctor" whenever possible for routine office visits.

The Questionnaire Programming Language [QPL]: An Overview with Examples of Call Management

The Questionnaire Programming Language (QPL) software provides a relatively easy, quick, and reliable way to automate surveys. QPL was produced by Kevin Dooley and associates at the U.S. General Accounting Office and is a public-domain program. QPL is useful for conducting small- to large-scale computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) and self-admimstered questionnaire surveys. It also is useful for data entry and automated production of SPSS or SAS data definition files. In this article the QPL system is described with some example of how it has been used. These examples include a survey conducted in an instructional context. Particular emphasis is given to how to implement call management with "control" files of telephone numbers. Keywords. QPL, CATI, computer-assisted telephone interviewing, data entry.

Methodological aspects of a computer‐assisted telephone interview survey of oral health

Despite the reported benefits of computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) methods, experiences from their use in Australian oral health surveys have not been described. This report aimed to present methodological aspects of a CATI survey conducted in the five mainland states. A response rate of 66 per cent was obtained, yielding 4050 completed interviews. Analysis revealed generally small levels of non-response bias: persons who avoided or delayed dental treatment because of cost and non-health card holders were harder to contact, while non-English speakers and persons aged 20-29 years were less likely to participate. A total of 1770 person hours of interview time was spent on the survey: 64.5 per cent of that time was spent on the telephone with an average of 10 minutes 17 seconds per call (13 minutes 37 seconds per completed call). Only seven questions had missing data for more than 1 per cent of respondents. Comprehension of questions and cooperation with the interview was rated by interviewers as 'good' or 'very good' for more than 90 per cent of respondents. The CATI method was highly efficient and yielded good quality data for the survey.

On the Relationship between Attitudes and Values: Exploring the Moderating Effects of Self-Monitoring and Self-Monitoring Schematicity

The moderating effect of self-monitoring on the relation between values and attitudes, and the extent to which self-monitoring schematicity accentuates this relationship were examined in a computer-assisted telephone interview (CATJ) survey. Subjects were polled on two policy issues, on their endorsement of values related to these issues, and on their self-monitoring tendencies. Response latency to the self-monitoring questions formed the self-monitoring schematicity index. Values predicted attitudes to a greater extent for low than for high self-monitors. Moreover, individuals who quickly answered questions about their self-monitoring tendencies (schematic low and high self-monitors) behaved more consistently with the tenets of the construct than individuals who answered the questions slowly. The implications of these results for theorizing about the influence of values on attitudes and for the role of schematicity in self-assessment in the personality domain are discussed.

Response Latency and the Accessibility of Voting Intentions: What Contributes to Accessibility and How it Affects Vote Choice

Response latencies to all questions in a computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) survey of the 1990 Ontario election were recorded. Prior to the election, a random sample of respondents were asked about their voting intention, their leader preference, their party preference, and their customary party identification. After the election, respondents were called back to determine if they had voted and, if so, for what party. Models of vote choice demonstrated that the voting behavior of respondents who expressed their voting intention quickly in the preelection interview was much more predictable than the voting behavior of respondents who expressed their voting intention slowly. The accessibility of voting intentions was, in turn, related to conflict among determinants of vote choice. Moreover the accessibility of voting intentions was related to the accessibility of party identification, but only for respondents who did not experience a conflict in the election.

Question Wording and Partisanship: Change and Continuity in Party Loyalties During the 1992 Election Campaign

Gallup macropartisanship varies more over time than aggregate measures of partisanship employing the standard Michigan Survey Research Center (SRC) party identification measure, but previous analyses do not provide direct evidence about why Gallup macropartisanship is more variable. Although these differences could result from the short-term focus of the Gallup party affiliation question, aggregate-level analyses cannot test the effects of question wording directly. Between March and October 1992, we conducted a series of question-wording experiments, employing six statewide computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) surveys of Michigan adults, including a four-wave panel study. Our analyses strongly suggest that the Gallup measure responds more to short-term political conditions and clearly demonstrate that the Gallup measure is less stable over time. These individual-level results help explain why Gallup macropartisanship varies more over time than aggregate measures of partisanship employing the standard SRC measure and raise questions about the degree to which one can generalize from analyses using the Gallup data to the research literature on party identification.