Trial reportBMJ open2023
Examination of the demographic representativeness of a cross-sectional mobile phone survey in collecting health data in Colombia using random digit dialling.
Trial report in BMJ open, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Do Mobile Phone Surveys Supplement Other Mortality Surveillance Methods? Results From a National Study in Bangladesh.Tropical medicine & international health : TM & IH · 2026Article
- Computer-Assisted Mobile Phone Interviews in Low- and Middle-Income Countries Through a Total Survey Error Framework.Public opinion quarterly · 2026Review
- Understanding retention in longitudinal surveys conducted by mobile phone in lower-resource contexts: A case study from Kenya.PloS one · 2026Article
- The effect of mobile phone messaging to support COVID-19 vaccination in Colombia: A randomized controlled clinical trial.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Measuring childhood mortality through mobile phone interviews in Mozambique.Tropical medicine & international health : TM & IH · 2025Article
- Exploring barriers to IVR surveys and the effectiveness of human follow-up calls: insights from a mixed methods study in Uganda.Oxford open digital health · 2025Article
- Recruiting hard-to-reach populations via respondent driven sampling for mobile phone surveys in Colombia: a qualitative study.Global health action · 2024Article
- To what extent did households in developing countries forgo needed healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic? Repeated survey estimates from 25 countries in 2020 and 2021.BMJ public health · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesAs mobile phone ownership becomes more widespread in low-income and middle-income countries, mobile phone surveys (MPSs) present an opportunity to collect data on health more cost-effectively. However, selectivity and coverage biases in MPS are concerns, and there is limited information about the population-level representativeness of these surveys compared with household surveys. This study aims at comparing the sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents of an MPS on non-communicable disease risk factors to a household survey in Colombia.
designCross-sectional study. We used a random digit dialling method to select the samples for calling mobile phone numbers. The survey was conducted using two modalities: computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATIs) and interactive voice response (IVR). The participants were assigned randomly to one of the survey modalities based on a targeted sampling quota stratified by age and sex. The Quality-of-Life Survey (ECV), a nationally representative survey conducted in the same year of the MPS, was used as a reference to compare the sample distributions by sociodemographic characteristics of the MPS data. Univariate and bivariate analyses were performed to evaluate the population representativeness between the ECV and the MPSs.
settingThe study was conducted in Colombia in 2021.
participantsPopulation at least 18 years old with a mobile phone.
resultsWe completed 1926 and 2983 interviews for CATI and IVR, respectively. We found that the MPS data have a similar (within 10% points) age-sex data distribution compared with the ECV dataset for some subpopulations, mainly for young populations, people with none/primary and secondary education levels, and people who live in urban and rural areas.
conclusionsThis study shows that MPS could collect similar data to household surveys in terms of age, sex, high school education level and geographical area for some population categories. Strategies are needed to improve representativeness of the under-represented groups.
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