Effectiveness of two methods of obtaining feedback on mental health services provided to anonymous recipients

The authors examined alternative methods for obtaining feedback from people receiving anonymous mental health services via Project Liberty, an initiative that provided free counseling to residents of the New York City area after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Counselors offered all English-speaking and Spanish-speaking adults who used Project Liberty crisis counseling services the opportunity to evaluate Project Liberty via a telephone interview (eight sites) or a brief questionnaire (four sites).

A total of 107 service recipients provided feedback via a brief 32-item questionnaire, and 153 gave feedback via a 45-minute telephone interview. Although the overall participation rates were modest (less than 20 percent), nearly three-quarters of those who volunteered to participate in the telephone interview (for which they received $20) did so. Neither gender nor racial or ethnic group was associated with a greater likelihood of participating in one method over another.

Responses to items on the brief questionnaire and in the telephone interview were similar, and offering multiple response methods increased participation rates. Although telephone interviews were more costly than the questionnaire to administer, they provided important additional information about ongoing symptoms and problems that individuals experienced after the attacks. The modest response rates obtained in the evaluation indicate that future evaluations of postdisaster services need to use methodstomaximizeresponse rates and provider adherence to administrative tasks that are critical to the evaluation.