Data Collection MethodsHealth and lifestyle surveys are most commonly undertaken by post, with mailings
to residents from a few thousand (giving local authority level data), to
15-20,000 (giving ward level data) and up to 50-100,000 (in regional lifestyle
surveys).There are some exceptions to the ‘postal survey’ rule:
There are also experiments in using web-based lifestyle surveys. For example,
Adams and White conducted on online lifestyle survey by advertising the survey
on regional TV. There are also examples of lifestyle surveys using
‘combined’ approaches –
offline and online.
In deciding on which method to use in your lifestyle survey, it is worth first
considering the pros and cons of the various data collection methods.
Click here
for more detail.
A summary of the trade-offs between data collection methodology response rate,
bias and cost is given here.For background
information on the key aspects of precision and bias,
click here. |
