Recruitment using mobile telephones in an Irish general population sexual health survey: challenges and practical solutions

BACKGROUND: Non-coverage of households without a landline telephone is a major concern of telephone survey researchers. Sampling mobile telephone users in national surveys is vital in order to gain access to the growing proportion of households that use mobile telephones extensively or exclusively. The complex logistics of conducting surveys with mobile telephones have been discussed in the literature. This paper outlines the actual challenges encountered during a recent national sexual health survey in Ireland, which utilized a mobile telephone sampling frame to recruit approximately half of the sample. METHOD: The 2010 Irish Contraception and Crisis Pregnancy Survey (ICCP-2010) is a nationally representative sample of adults aged 18-45 years living in Ireland (n = 3002; 1416 recruited by landline telephone and 1586 recruited by mobile telephone). The overall response rate for the survey was 69% (79% for the landline telephone strand; 61% for the mobile telephone strand). All interviews were conducted using computer-assisting telephone interviewing. RESULTS: During the 18-week fieldwork period, five main challenges relating to the use of mobile telephones were encountered: (1) explaining to respondents how random digit dialling works in relation to mobile telephones; (2) establishing the respondent\u27s eligibility; (3) calling the respondent with the Caller ID blocked or withheld; (4) calling the respondent when they are in any number of locations or situations; and (5) explaining to respondents the importance of refusal conversion calls for the response rate calculation. Details of how the survey protocols and procedures were monitored and adapted throughout the study to ensure a high response rate are outlined. CONCLUSION: It is undeniably more challenging to recruit respondents using mobile telephones as opposed to landline telephones. Respondents are generally not familiar with being contacted on their personal mobile telephone for the purposes of being recruited for a research study. The main challenge for survey methodologists and interviewers is to devise simple protocols to explain to respondents why they are being contacted on a mobile telephone. Recommendations for survey researchers interested in using this methodological approach in the future are discussed

'A mockery of equality': An exploratory investigation into disabled activists' views of the Paralympic Games

This article offers an exploratory analysis of the opinions of disabled activists towards the Paralympic Games. With the use of a qualitative online survey, the work focuses on the perceptions of disabled individuals (n = 32) who are not Paralympic athletes but are affiliated to the disability rights group, the United Kingdom Disabled People's Council. Working on the premise that the views of disabled activists have been excluded from Paralympic sports discourse to date, the results illustrate a nuanced yet negative view of the Games to contrast with an existing, yet overly positive, academic narrative. Participants were particularly cynical of the portrayal and production of the Games and its Paralympic athletes as they perceived that the wider population of disabled people is misrepresented. The overwhelming perception in this preliminary analysis suggests that the Paralympic Games can be counterproductive to disability rights beyond sport

Falling behind: life expectancy in US counties from 2000 to 2007 in an international context

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The United States health care debate has focused on the nation's uniquely high rates of lack of insurance and poor health outcomes relative to other high-income countries. Large disparities in health outcomes are well-documented in the US, but the most recent assessment of county disparities in mortality is from 1999. It is critical to tracking progress of health reform legislation to have an up-to-date assessment of disparities in life expectancy across counties. US disparities can be seen more clearly in the context of how progress in each county compares to international trends.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We use newly released mortality data by age, sex, and county for the US from 2000 to 2007 to compute life tables separately for each sex, for all races combined, for whites, and for blacks. We propose, validate, and apply novel methods to estimate recent life tables for small areas to generate up-to-date estimates. Life expectancy rates and changes in life expectancy for counties are compared to the life expectancies across nations in 2000 and 2007. We calculate the number of calendar years behind each county is in 2000 and 2007 compared to an international life expectancy time series.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Across US counties, life expectancy in 2007 ranged from 65.9 to 81.1 years for men and 73.5 to 86.0 years for women. When compared against a time series of life expectancy in the 10 nations with the lowest mortality, US counties range from being 15 calendar years ahead to over 50 calendar years behind for men and 16 calendar years ahead to over 50 calendar years behind for women. County life expectancy for black men ranges from 59.4 to 77.2 years, with counties ranging from seven to over 50 calendar years behind the international frontier; for black women, the range is 69.6 to 82.6 years, with counties ranging from eight to over 50 calendar years behind. Between 2000 and 2007, 80% (men) and 91% (women) of American counties fell in standing against this international life expectancy standard.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The US has extremely large geographic and racial disparities, with some communities having life expectancies already well behind those of the best-performing nations. At the same time, relative performance for most communities continues to drop. Efforts to address these issues will need to tackle the leading preventable causes of death.</p

Prediksi Kenaikan atau Penurunan Indeks Pasar Keuangan Indonesia dengan Menggunakan Bayesian Network

Investasi saham pada pasar keuangan dilakukan untuk meningkatkan aset pada masa depan. Dalam melakukan investasi harus mempertimbangkan hasil yang akan didapatkan atau biasa disebut return. Setiap investor akan berusaha mendapatkan return semaksimal mungkin dari investasi yang dilakukannya. Oleh karena itu, perlu dilakukan prediksi perubahan kenaikan atau penurunan pada pasar saham. Beberapa metode untuk membuat prediksi adalah Bayesian Network dan Algoritma Naive Bayes. Pada Tugas Akhir ini, dilakukan pemodelan jaringan sektor-sektor pasar keuangan Indonesia dengan menggunakan Bayesian Network, lalu melakukan prediksi berdasarkan kenaikan atau penurunan harga penutupan dari tiap sektor. Metode yang digunakan adalah menggunakan Algoritma Naive Bayes Diskrit dan Kontinu. Setelah itu, menentukan metode yang terbaik untuk perhitungan prediksi dengan melihat tingkat akurasi dari setiap metode dengan confusion matrix. Sektor pasar keuangan yang digunakan yaitu nilai tukar USD/IDR, IHSG, dan Obligasi. Perhitungan dilakukan berdasarkan ketergantungan antara nilai tukar USD/IDR terhadap IHSG, dan nilai tukar USD/IDR terhadap Obligasi. Metode Naive Bayes Diskrit menunjukan hasil yang lebih akurat dengan akurasi sebesar 84% untuk IHSG dan 76% untuk Obligasi. Sedangkan perhitungan dengan metode Naive Bayes Kontinu memiliki akurasi sebesar 52% untuk IHSG dan 48% untuk Obligasi. Sektor nilai tukar USD/IDR lebih mempengaruhi IHSG, karena tingkat akurasi yang diperoleh IHSG lebih tinggi dibandingkan dengan Obligasi

List based Web surveys: quality, timeliness and nonresponse in the steps of the participation flow

The debate on quality issues in web surveys is open and lively (see , i.e., the Web Survey Methodology site). Data quality is required to satisfy the user's needs. Improving the survey process quality is a precondition for obtaining product quality at acceptable cost. This article contributes to the debate focusing on the timeliness of web surveys. From our perspective the timeliness of data collection is mainly due to the timeliness of response from the members of the eligible population. We identify several steps in the web survey process and divide the final response rate into different components, one for each step. We model the survival of eligible respondents, finding out which participants come farthest in the process of a web survey. The analysis contributes to the efforts to explore the nonresponse process and to shorten the individual survey period length

Non-probability Sampling

A sample is a subset of a population and we survey the units from the sample with the aim to learn about the entire population. However, the sampling theory was basically developed for probability sampling, where all units in the population have known and positive probabilities of inclusion. This definition implicitly involves randomization, which is a process resembling lottery drawing, where the units are selected according to their inclusion probabilities. In probability sampling the randomized selection is used instead of arbitrary or purposive sample selection of the researcher, or, instead of various self-selection processes run by respondents. Within this context, the notion of non-probability sampling denotes the absence of probability sampling mechanism