CHARACTERISTICS OF RESPONDENTS TO TELEPHONE AND HOUSEHOLD CARDIOVASCULAR-DISEASE RISK FACTOR SURVEYS

Telephone surveys have been used for years to study a wide variety of topics ranging from public opinions to health information, and they wi ll most likely be an important tool in the planning, conducting and ev aluation of community-based health promotion programs designed to acco mplish the broad public health goals set forth by the US Government fo r the year 2000. Many studies have compared the results from telephone and household surveys and found that, for some kinds of information, respondent characteristics and data quality of telephone surveys are s imilar to those of more time consuming and costly face-to-face househo ld surveys. From March 1989 to May 1990, 1328 adults from Pawtucket, R I were interviewed either in person or by telephone about cardiovascul ar disease (CVD)-related risk factors, behaviours and knowledge, as we ll as selected demographic characteristics. Demographic characteristic s of respondents to the two surveys were quite similar except for race , which differed significantly between the two surveys. Some self-repo rted CVD-related characteristics were similar between the two surveys (smoking, history of high blood pressure or cholesterol and self-rated blood pressure or cholesterol compared with others of similar age and sex), while others were not (CVD knowledge index, body mass index, pr evalence of obesity, blood pressure, prevalence of hypertension and ph ysical activity). With careful attention to the limitation of telephon e surveys, this survey method can confidently be applied to the evalua tion of other health promotion programs thus allowing more extensive d ata collection at less cost.