Developing methods to compare low-education community-based and university-based survey teams

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Survey Methodology
• Community-Based Research

Background:

• Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is increasingly used in public health.
• Assessing the data quality of community-based survey teams compared to traditional academic teams is crucial for validating research methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the data collection quality of community-based survey teams with college-educated graduate students.
• To develop and pilot methods for evaluating the relative performance of different survey team compositions.

Main Methods:

• A pilot survey was conducted in a Boston public housing development.
• Non-overlapping random samples of addresses were assigned to community teams and university teams.
• Key metrics including attempts, response rate, missing data, and refusal rates were analyzed.

Main Results:

• Both team types made a similar number of contact attempts.
• No statistically significant differences were found in response rates, missing data, or refusal rates.
• Community teams showed some issues with improper use of data tracking forms, but overall data quality was comparable.

Conclusions:

• Community-based survey teams can achieve data collection quality comparable to university-based teams.
• The study demonstrates the feasibility of comparing the quality of different survey team types.
• Further refinement of data management protocols may enhance community team performance.