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Activity Number: 376
Type: Invited
Date/Time: Tuesday, August 5, 2014 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
Sponsor: Health Policy Statistics Section
Abstract #310695
Title: An Algorithm to Predict Probability of Spanish Reference, Calibrated by the Results of a Randomized Survey Experiment
Author(s): Marc N. Elliott*+
Companies: RAND Corporation
Keywords: Indirect Estimation ; Survey Mode ; Spanish Language ; Randomized Experiment
Abstract:

We link name and address information from Medicare beneficiaries to ACS and Census Data, predict Hispanic ethnicity via a Bayesian algorithm, and predict the probability of Spanish response to the CAHPS survey of Medicare beneficiaries under its initial protocol: mailout-mailback of a paper instrument, with telephone followup of nonrespondents. Prior to the experiment, only English mail surveys were used, so response rates by Spanish-preferring beneficiaries were low & Spanish response was limited to telephone followup. A logistic regression predicted the probability of Spanish-phone response with 98% concordance. The next year, 5000 of the 10,000 beneficiaries with the highest predicted probability of preferring Spanish were randomized to a bilingual mailing, with bilingual telephone followup. This intervention substantially increased mail and total response rates but not phone response rates in the target population, with a majority of intervention arm mail and phone response in Spanish. Finally, we used the experimental data to calibrate the algorithm to predict the probability of Spanish preference (response in Spanish under a fully bilingual survey protocol).


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