Transitioning the Healthy Chicago Survey from a telephone mode to self-administered by mail mode

Abstract

Context: As response rates to health surveys conducted by telephone continue to decline and costs continue to increase, practitioners are increasingly considering a transition to self-administered mail contact modes. Objective: To compare empirical differences observed across adjacent administrations of the Healthy Chicago Survey (HCS) conducted by telephone versus self-administered via mail contact. Design: Data from the 2016, 2018, and 2020 administrations of the HCS are contrasted, and demographic distributions are benchmarked against the American Community Survey to investigate differences that may be linked to the HCS' transition from a telephone to self-administered mail mode between 2018 and 2020. Setting: All survey data were collected from adult residents of Chicago, Illinois, between 2016 and 2020. Main Outcome Measures: Costs, response rates, key health statistics, demographic distributions, and measures of precision generated from the HCS. Results: The mail mode led to a response rate increase of 6.8% to 38.2% at half the cost per complete. Mail respondents are more likely to be nonminority, female, and hold a college degree. Key health statistic differences are mixed, but design effects are larger in the mail mode, which we attribute to more detailed geographic stratification and weighting employed in 2020. Conclusions: The mail mode is a less costly data collection strategy for the HCS, but it comes with trade-offs. The quasi-random selection of an individual in the household exacerbates sociodemographic distribution disparities.