Data gathering by telephone. An application in a study of clinical nursing

This article addresses the use of the telephone in collection of research data. First, the authors review the benefits and limitations of data collection by telephone as they are discussed in the literature. Collection of data by telephone has been favorably compared to data collection by mail and by home interview. Next, use of the telephone in a study of individual and family health outcomes from cardiac surgery is discussed. Telephone data collection produced higher rates of return at less expense than did mail return of data. Thus, the use of the telephone was an effective and economic technique for data collection.