↓ Skip to main content

An experimental comparison of web-push vs. paper-only survey procedures for conducting an in-depth health survey of military spouses

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Medical Research Methodology, April 2017
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • Above-average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (54th percentile)
  • Average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source

Mentioned by

twitter
3 X users
facebook
2 Facebook pages

Citations

dimensions_citation
60 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
69 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
An experimental comparison of web-push vs. paper-only survey procedures for conducting an in-depth health survey of military spouses
Published in
BMC Medical Research Methodology, April 2017
DOI 10.1186/s12874-017-0337-1
Pubmed ID
Authors

Hope Seib McMaster, Cynthia A. LeardMann, Steven Speigle, Don A. Dillman, for the Millennium Cohort Family Study Team

Abstract

Previous research has found that a "web-push" approach to data collection, which involves contacting people by mail to request an Internet survey response while withholding a paper response option until later in the contact process, consistently achieves lower response rates than a "paper-only" approach, whereby all respondents are contacted and requested to respond by mail. An experiment was designed, as part of the Millennium Cohort Family Study, to compare response rates, sample representativeness, and cost between a web-push and a paper-only approach; each approach comprised 3 stages of mail contacts. The invited sample (n = 4,935) consisted of spouses married to U.S. Service members, who had been serving in the military between 2 and 5 years as of October, 2011. The web-push methodology produced a significantly higher response rate, 32.8% compared to 27.8%. Each of the 3 stages of postal contact significantly contributed to response for both treatments with 87.1% of the web-push responses received over the Internet. The per-respondent cost of the paper-only treatment was almost 40% higher than the web-push treatment group. Analyses revealed no meaningfully significant differences between treatment groups in representation. These results provide evidence that a web-push methodology is more effective and less expensive than a paper-only approach among young military spouses, perhaps due to their heavy reliance on the internet, and we suggest that this approach may be more effective with the general population as they become more uniformly internet savvy.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 3 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 69 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 69 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 12 17%
Student > Master 12 17%
Researcher 11 16%
Student > Bachelor 5 7%
Student > Doctoral Student 4 6%
Other 8 12%
Unknown 17 25%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Social Sciences 8 12%
Nursing and Health Professions 8 12%
Medicine and Dentistry 7 10%
Business, Management and Accounting 3 4%
Computer Science 3 4%
Other 16 23%
Unknown 24 35%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 12 August 2022.
All research outputs
#7,567,797
of 23,081,466 outputs
Outputs from BMC Medical Research Methodology
#1,107
of 2,034 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#119,521
of 310,011 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Medical Research Methodology
#21
of 38 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,081,466 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 44th percentile – i.e., 44% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,034 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 10.2. This one is in the 43rd percentile – i.e., 43% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 310,011 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 54% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 38 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 42nd percentile – i.e., 42% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.