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Created: April 28, 2003
Latest Update: April 28, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Obesity: Survey Response Rates Over Class

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, April 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This exercise is based on the summary of an article appearing in Public Health Nutrition: The socio-economic patterning of survey participation and non-response error in a multilevel study of food purchasing behaviour: area- and individual-level characteristics Public Health Nutrition. April 2003, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 181-190(10). ByTurrell G.; Patterson C.; Oldenburg B.[; Gould T.; Roy M-A.: Queensland University of Technology, School of Public Health, Victoria Park Road, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane, Queensland 4059, Australia. Backup.

Discussion Questions Based on Article:

1. Is the article about socio-economic class and food purchasing behavior?

   No. The article is about survey participation and non-response in a public survey. The survey was about socio-economic class and food purchasing behavior.

   Notice how you have to read the statement of the problem closely in order to avoid confusion here. Do you think it might have been clearer if the authors had written: "To undertake an assessment of survey participation and non-response error in a population-based study. The study addressed the relationship between socio-economic position and food purchasing behaviour. This article addresses the social-economic effect on survey response and willingness to participate."

   For me, it would have been clearer. Notice that a few short sentences are easier to read and make sense of than a long, complex sentence. Of course, journal editors sometimes prefer to publish long, complex sentences. They sound so intellectual.

2. Is the research procedure clearly emphasized in the article?

   Check out the advance organizers (or SubTitles). They outline the steps in article, or research paper, or thesis quite clearly:

   1. Objective
   2. Design and Setting
   3. Participants
   4. Results
   5. Conclusions

3. What is cluster sampling? What is stratified sampling?

   The dictionary isn't much help on cluster, but stratify might give you a clue.

   Use a search engine like Yahoo to look up "cluster sampling AND statistics". If you don't add statistics you'll get thousands of responses from different disciplines.

   Here's one good sample: Sampling Methods On the Statistics Finland site.

   What is the stratified two-stage cluster design used in the article? First, consider the socio-economic class stratification. Perhaps middle class and working class. Then from each of those classes (which are mutually exclusive, and would cover the whole country, the cluster samples can be drawn.

4. Was this a telephone survey?

   No. It was a "home-based face-to-face interviews; multiple call-backs on different days and at different times" survey. Consider the expense of such a survey relative to a telephone survey?

5. Why do such an expensive survey?

   Consider the importance of food purchasing to the health of a nation. And consider the results: "non-respondents were older, less educated and exhibited different purchasing behaviours." If non-respondents are different, and if we are concerned about their effect on the health of the country as a whole, then we need to figure out how to get them to respond.

   What are the conclusions about the importance of sampling techniques and methods?

   "Future studies that set out to examine the relationship between socio-economic position and diet need to adopt sampling strategies and data collection methods that maximise the likelihood of recruiting participants from all points on the socio-economic spectrum, and particularly persons from disadvantaged backgrounds."