Copyright © 2004 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
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Comparability of Skin Screening Histories Obtained by Telephone Interviews and Mailed Questionnaires: A Randomized Crossover Study
1 Epidemiology Unit, Centre for Research in Cancer Control, Queensland Cancer Fund, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
2 School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia.
3 School of Public Health, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
4 National Cancer Control Initiative, Carlton, Victoria, Australia.
5 Health Information Centre, Queensland Health, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
6 Department of Community and Behavioral Health, College of Public Health, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.
The comparability of information collected through telephone interviews and information collected through mailed questionnaires has not been well studied. As part of the first phase of a randomized controlled trial of population screening for melanoma in Queensland, Australia, the authors compared histories of skin examination reported in telephone interviews and self-administered mailed questionnaires. A total of 1,270 subjects each completed a telephone interview and a mailed questionnaire 1 month apart in 1999; 564 subjects received the interview first, and 706 received the mailed questionnaire first. Agreement between the two methods was 91.2% and 88.6% for whole-body skin examination by a physician in the last 12 months and the last 3 years, respectively, and 81.9% for whole-body skin self-examination in the last 12 months. Agreement was lower for "any" skin self-examination. Agreement between the two methods was similar regardless of whether the interview or the questionnaire was administered first. Missing data were less frequent for interviews (0.5%) than for mailed questionnaires (3.8%). Costs were estimated at A$9.55 (US$6.21) per completed interview and A$3.01 (US$1.96) per questionnaire. The similarity of results obtained using telephone interviews and mailed questionnaires, coupled with the substantially higher cost of telephone interviews, suggests that self-administered mailed questionnaires are an appropriate method of assessing this health behavior.
cross-over studies; data collection; mass screening; melanoma; randomized controlled trials; skin
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