Harling, G;
Gumede, D;
Mutevedzi, T;
McGrath, N;
Seeley, J;
Pillay, D;
Baernighausen, TW;
(2017)
The impact of self-interviews on response patterns for sensitive topics: a randomized trial of electronic delivery methods for a sexual behaviour questionnaire in rural South Africa.
BMC Medical Research Methodology
, 17
, Article 125. 10.1186/s12874-017-0403-8.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: Self-interviews, where the respondent rather than the interviewer enters answers to questions, have been proposed as a way to reduce social desirability bias associated with interviewer-led interviews. Computer-assisted self-interviews (CASI) are commonly proposed since the computer programme can guide respondents; however they require both language and computer literacy. We evaluated the feasibility and acceptability of using electronic methods to administer quantitative sexual behaviour questionnaires in the Somkhele demographic surveillance area (DSA) in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. METHODS: We conducted a four-arm randomized trial of paper-and-pen-interview, computer-assisted personal-interview (CAPI), CASI and audio-CASI with an age-sex-urbanicity stratified sample of 504 adults resident in the DSA in 2015. We compared respondents’ answers to their responses to the same questions in previous surveillance rounds. We also conducted 48 cognitive interviews, dual-coding responses using the Framework approach. RESULTS: Three hundred forty (67%) individuals were interviewed and covariates and participation rates were balanced across arms. CASI and audio-CASI were significantly slower than interviewer-led interviews. Item non-response rates were higher in self-interview arms. In single-paper meta-analysis, self-interviewed individuals reported more socially undesirable sexual behaviours. Cognitive interviews found high acceptance of both self-interviews and the use of electronic methods, with some concerns that self-interview methods required more participant effort and literacy. CONCLUSIONS: Electronic data collection methods, including self-interview methods, proved feasible and acceptable for completing quantitative sexual behaviour questionnaires in a poor, rural South African setting. However, each method had both benefits and costs, and the choice of method should be based on context-specific criteria.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The impact of self-interviews on response patterns for sensitive topics: a randomized trial of electronic delivery methods for a sexual behaviour questionnaire in rural South Africa |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s12874-017-0403-8 |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-017-0403-8 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s). 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
| Keywords: | Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Health Care Sciences & Services, Randomized trial, Interview methods, Mixed-methods, Sexual behaviour, Single-paper meta-analysis, HIV, VALIDITY, MODES, PARTNERSHIPS, METAANALYSIS, COUNTRIES, IMPROVE, QUALITY, COHORT |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Infection and Immunity UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute for Global Health |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1571164 |
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