Methodological issues for health-related surveys of multicultural older women

Given concerns about survey nonresponse bias as well as the need to plan resources for participant recruitment, this study tracked each step of the recruitment process (location, response, consent, and completion) of sociodemographically diverse older women for a survey concerning mammography experience. Younger, less educated poor women were likely to be lost due to inability to locate them, while older middle- and upper-economic-group women were more likely to be lost due to refusal to participate. Hispanic and Black women were significantly more likely to respond on successive attempts to recruit them than were White, non-Hispanic women. There was no significant difference in refusal rates by minority women over the successive contacts, as contrasted with White women, who refused at significantly higher rates with each attempt.