Assessing the potential to combine attitude tracking and health campaign evaluation surveys

Issue addressed: Online surveys are becoming increasingly popular in health research because of the low cost and fast completion time. A large proportion of online survey costs are allocated to setup and administration expenses, which suggests that conducting fewer, longer surveys would be a cost-effective approach. The current study assessed whether the incorporation of a health campaign evaluation survey within a longitudinal attitudes and behaviours tracking survey produced different outcomes compared with the separate administration of the evaluation survey.Methods: Data were collected via an online panel, with 688 respondents completing the combined survey and 657 respondents completing the evaluation-only survey. Regression analyses were conducted to examine whether survey type was related to the campaign evaluation results.Results: Those who completed the combined survey perceived the campaign advertisement to be more personally relevant than those completing the evaluation-only survey. There were no differences in results relating to campaign awareness and reported behavioural change as a result of campaign exposure.Conclusions: There were minimal differences between results obtained from combining an attitude/behaviour tracking survey with a campaign evaluation survey. Any priming or order effects were limited to respondents' cognitive responses to the advertisement.So what?: The results suggest that health practitioners with limited resources available for tracking and evaluation research may be able to maximise outcomes by administering fewer, longer surveys.