title: Developing methods to compare low-education community-based and university-based survey teams.
abstract: We compared the quality of low-education community-based survey teams to college educated graduate students. Our approach was to develop methods, conduct a pilot survey, and report lessons. Community and university teams conducted surveys from non-overlapping random samples of addresses at a public housing development in Boston, Massachusetts. The two types of teams make a similar number of attempts (122 and 124, respectively), and there was no statistically significant difference between the teams in terms of response rate or amount of missing data. Similarly, there was no statistically significant difference in refusal rate or in responses to questions in the survey. There was, however, evidence that the community teams used data tracking forms improperly. This study suggests that it is possible to study the relative quality of community and university-based teams in terms of data collection. The findings also suggest that the two types of teams may be roughly comparable.
authors.affiliation: Tufts Community Research Center, Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. dbrugge@aol.com
authors.forename: Doug
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Brugge
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kapunan
authors.forename: Lauren
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Babcock-Dunning
authors.forename: Robyn Greenfield
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Matloff
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cagua-Koo
authors.forename: Ekwutosi
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Okoroh
authors.forename: Fatima L
authors.initials: FL
authors.lastname: Salas
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bradeen
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Woodin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001900:Boston; D055812:Community-Based Participatory Research / Q000379:methods* / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods*; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011638:Public Housing; D036301:Qualitative Research