The future of random-digit-dial surveys for injury prevention and violence research

A central issue facing injury prevention research today is how to collect self-reported data on injury and violence from a geographically dispersed public, quickly, cost effectively, and with a reasonable degree of confidence in the quality of the results. Questions about eroding frame coverage, declining participation rates, and increasing potential for bias have raised doubts about the long-term viability of random-digit-dial (RDD) telephone surveys for injury prevention research. So where does the future lie? The four articles in this volume, as well as other research, point down two paths: (1) continued reliance on RDD, or (2) adoption of alternative survey designs. Continued use of RDD methodology will require additional research in the areas of response rate improvement, techniques for enhancing post-survey adjustments, and cost-effective approaches to nonresponse bias analysis. Moving away from a strict reliance on RDD methodology, injury prevention research could adopt mixed-mode approaches (such as combining telephone, mail, and web-based surveys) or make use of address-based sampling frames as a method for reaching sample members currently missed by most RDD approaches. Either way, the future of collecting self-reports of injury and injury prevention data will be more complex and require considerable resources.