Sampling Children and Teens in a Cell Phone Health Survey

• Activity Number: 594
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 4, 2010 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): David Grant*+ and Sunghee Lee and Royce Park and J. Michael Brick and W. Sherman Edwards and W. Sherman Edwards
• Companies: University of California, Los Angeles Center for Health Policy Research and University of California, Los Angeles Center for Health Policy Research and University of California, Los Angeles Center for Health Policy Research and Westat and Westat and Westat
• Keywords: Cell phones ; noncoverage bias ; health surveillance ; RDD

Abstract

The growth of cell-phone only households increases the likelihood of noncoverage bias affecting a variety of health estimates in traditional landline RDD surveys. Although recent data from the National Center for Health Statistics suggest the percent of children in cell-phone only households is on par with that of adults, noncoverage bias studies have focused on adults. In 2009 the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS 2009) expanded its cell phone sampling strategy to select children (age 0 to 11 by parental proxy) and adolescents (age 12 to 17), in addition to adults who had been sampled in CHIS 2007. This study reports on the issues faced in interviewing parents of children and teens in cell-phone surveys, and presents some preliminary results to assess noncoverage bias in the CHIS 2009 child and teen landline RDD samples.