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Martin R Frankel

Publications and source records attributed to Martin R Frankel.

4 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Address-based versus random-digit-dial surveys: comparison of key health and risk indicators.

Use of random-digit dialing (RDD) for conducting health surveys is increasingly problematic because of declining participation rates and eroding frame coverage. Alternative survey modes and sampling frames may improve response rates and increase the validity of survey estimates. In a 2005 pilot study conducted in six states as part of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the authors administered a mail survey to selected household members sampled from addresses in a US Postal Service database. The authors compared estimates based on data from the completed mail surveys (n = 3,010) with those from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System telephone surveys (n = 18,780). The mail survey data appeared reasonably complete, and estimates based on data from the two survey modes were largely equivalent. Differences found, such as differences in the estimated prevalences of binge drinking (mail = 20.3%, telephone = 13.1%) or behaviors linked to human immunodeficiency virus transmission (mail = 7.1%, telephone = 4.2%), were consistent with previous research showing that, for questions about sensitive behaviors, self-administered surveys generally produce higher estimates than interviewer-administered surveys. The mail survey also provided access to cell-phone-only households and households without telephones, which cannot be reached by means of standard RDD surveys.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Estimating the prevalence of uninsured children: an evaluation of data from the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs, 2001. Data evaluation and methods research.

UNLABELLED: The National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs revealed that 8.3% of children under 18 years of age were uninsured, a rate lower than the rate estimated by other national surveys. This report presents the results of an evaluation of the quality of this estimate, based on analyses of non-response, question design, interviewer and respondent effects, and the weighing and estimation process. National and State-level statistics on health insurance coverage for children with special health care needs (CSHCN) and for children without special needs are included in an appendix. SOURCE OF DATA: The National Survey of CSHCN is a survey module of the State and Local Area Integrated Telephone Survey. This survey of parents and guardians collected health insurance coverage information for a national sample of 215, 162 children. Data were collected from October 2000 through April 2002. RESULTS: Compared with other surveys, weighted data from the National Survey of CSHCN describe a population with a slightly larger proportion of Hispanic children and children from households with higher incomes. The National Survey of CSHCN was also the only survey to use a child-level design: A randomized experiment that varied the health insurance questions found that repeating the coverage questions for each child produced lower unisurance rates than household-level questions that first asked if anyone in the househol was insured. CONCLUSION: Question design differences explain much of the discrepancy between survey estimates of the uninsurance rate, but a definitive conclusion regarding the relative accuracy of the uninsurance rates is not possible.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Adjustments for non-telephone bias in random-digit-dialling surveys.

Telephone surveys are widely used in the U.S.A. for the study of health-related topics. They are subject to 'coverage bias' because they cannot sample households that do not have telephones. Although only around 5 per cent of households do not have a telephone, rates of telephone coverage show substantial variation by geography, demographic factors and socio-economic factors. In particular, lack of telephone service is more common among households that contain ethnic and racial minorities or that have lower socio-economic status with fewer opportunities for access to medical care and poorer health outcomes. Thus, failure to adequately account for households without telephones in health surveys may yield estimates of health outcomes that are misleading, particularly in states with at least moderate telephone non-coverage. The dynamic nature of the population of households without telephones offers a way of accounting for such households in telephone surveys. At any given time the population of telephone households includes households that have had a break or interruption in telephone service. Empirical results strongly suggest that these households are very similar to households that have never had telephone service. Thus, sampled households that report having had an interruption in telephone service may be used also to represent the portion of the population that has never had telephone service. This strategy can lead to a reduction in non-coverage bias in random-digit-dialling surveys. This paper presents two methods of adjusting for non-coverage of non-telephone households. The effectiveness of these methods is examined using data from the National Health Interview Survey. The interruption-in-telephone-service methods reduce non-coverage bias and can also result in a lower mean squared error. The application of the interruption-in-telephone-service methods to the National Immunization Survey is also discussed. This survey produces estimates for the 50 states and 28 urban areas. The interruption-in-telephone-service estimates tend be slightly lower than estimates resulting from poststratification and from another non-coverage adjustment method. The results suggest that the reduction in bias is greatest for variables that are highly correlated with the presence or absence of telephone service.

Bias↗