Holly A. Hill
National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Benjamin Fredua
National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Leidos Health, Inc.
Evaluating the Impact of Using Pre-Recorded Voicemail Messages in the National Immunization Surveys
Benjamin Skalland
NORC at the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Becky Reimer
NORC at the University of Chicago
Qiao Ma
NORC at the University of Chicago
Vince Welch
NORC at the University of Chicago
Sarah Kornylo
NORC at the University of Chicago
Kate Hobson
NORC at the University of Chicago
Holly A. Hill
National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Benjamin Fredua
National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Leidos Health, Inc.
The National Immunization Surveys (NIS) are large random-digit-dial (RDD) telephone surveys to assess vaccination coverage in the United States among children age 19-35 months (NIS-Child) and adolescents age 13-17 years (NIS-Teen), and to assess influenza vaccination coverage among children 6 months-17 years (NIS-Flu). Beginning in Quarter 4 of 2017, an evaluation was conducted in the NIS-Child, NIS-Teen, and NIS-Flu to examine the impact of pre-recorded voicemail messages on interviewer time and response rates. Households were randomly assigned to receive a live message (control group) or one of four versions of a pre-recorded message (experimental group) when a respondent's answering machine or voicemail was encountered. Pre-recorded messages differed by the age and gender of the person recording the message. We found that the use of pre-recorded messages significantly reduced interviewer time spent on these calls compared with live messages, and we found similar post-message contact rates between pre-recorded and live messages in both the landline and cell-phone samples. We present the study design, results, conclusions, limitations, and recommendations for future research.