Effective Observational Strategies for Health Survey Interviewers

健康调查访调员的有效观察策略

• 批准号: 8739300
• 负责人: Brady T West
• 金额: $ 7.56万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-09-21 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8739300
• 关键词: Anthropology; Area; Censuses; Cluster Analysis; Collection; Data; Data Collection; Ear; Effectiveness; Eye; Family; Growth; Health; Health Surveys; Household; Human; Interviewer; Lead; Literature; Measures; Methods; Michigan; National Health Interview Survey; Nonrespondent; Policies; Population; Psychology; Public Health; Research; Research Methodology; Research Project Grants; Respondent; Sampling; Source; Subgroup; Surveys; Techniques; Training; Universities; Work; base; cost effective; design; improved; multilevel analysis; programs; psychologic; public health relevance; response; theories

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In large health surveys like the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS, currently conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau) and the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG, currently conducted by the University of Michigan), observations that interviewers record describing selected features of all sampled units represent a promising, cost-effective source of auxiliary information that survey statisticians can use for nonresponse adjustment of survey estimates and responsive survey designs. Interviewers are the eyes and ears of the survey organization out in the field, and a small literature has shown that interviewers can successfully record observations on features of sampled units that are correlated with both key survey measures and response propensity. Unfortunately, these observations have been shown to be prone to error, and a growing body of research has demonstrated that increasing levels of error in the observations can limit the effectiveness of nonresponse adjustments. Furthermore, initial work in this area has found that interviewers vary substantially in the accuracy of their observations, even after controlling for interviewer- and household-level covariates. No existing study has attempted to identify additional sources of this variance. Motivated by literature in psychology and anthropology that examines sources of bias in human observation and preliminary work suggesting that interviewers vary in terms of their observational strategies, the proposed research aims to: 1) perform a qualitative analysis of several thousand justifications provided by NSFG interviewers for their observations on two key features of all sampled NSFG households; 2) use cluster analysis techniques to determine whether unique subgroups of NSFG interviewers exist based on the observational strategies evident in their justifications; and 3) use multilevel modeling techniques to compare the accuracy of the two observations among the identified subgroups of interviewers, controlling for other relevant correlates of observation accuracy. Successful completion of the proposed research will provide designers of health surveys with evidence of effective observational strategies that can help to standardize the collection of interviewer observations, and demonstrate a new research methodology that survey agencies can use to inform interviewer training.

描述（由申请人提供）：在国家健康访谈调查（NHIS，目前由美国人口普查局进行）和全国家庭成长调查（NSFG，目前由密歇根大学进行）等大型健康调查中，访谈者的观察结果描述所有抽样单位的选定特征的记录代表了一个有前途的、具有成本效益的辅助信息来源，调查统计人员可以使用这些信息来对调查估计和响应性调查设计进行无答复调整。访谈员是调查组织在现场的眼睛和耳朵，少量文献表明访谈员可以成功记录对与关键调查指标和反应倾向相关的抽样单位特征的观察结果。不幸的是，这些观察结果已被证明容易出错，而且越来越多的研究表明，观察结果中错误程度的增加可能会限制无反应调整的有效性。此外，该领域的初步工作发现，即使在控制了访谈者和家庭层面的协变量之后，访谈者的观察准确性也存在很大差异。现有研究尚未尝试确定这种差异的其他来源。 受心理学和人类学文献的启发，这些文献研究了人类观察中的偏见来源，并且初步工作表明访谈者的观察策略各不相同，拟议的研究旨在：1）对 NSFG 访谈者提供的数千个理由进行定性分析。他们对所有抽样 NSFG 家庭的两个主要特征的观察； 2) 使用聚类分析技术，根据其理由中明显的观察策略，确定 NSFG 访谈员是否存在独特的亚组； 3）使用多层次建模技术来比较已确定的访谈者亚组中两次观察的准确性，并控制观察准确性的其他相关因素。拟议研究的成功完成将为健康调查的设计者提供有效观察策略的证据，有助于标准化访谈员观察的收集，并展示调查机构可以用来为访谈员培训提供信息的新研究方法。