Population surveys of children's health and wellbeing: Parental views on data collection content and methods

Abstract

Pre-testing is a standard tool to increase appropriateness and to capture the audience, yet rarely is this technique employed for population surveys. This study aimed to examine parental views on the content and methodology of a population child health survey. Forty-eight Australian families of children aged 0-12 years were interviewed about the content and proposed data collection methods of the draft Victorian Population Survey of Child Health and Wellbeing. Concerns with instructions and items of several commonly used child health measures were identified. Parents preferred face-to-face methods rather than telephone interviews due to survey legitimacy; however, 72% of parents indicated th..