Is Internet Data Collection Superior to Traditional Methods in Retaining Participants in Longitudinal Research?

Detailed Summary

One of the biggest challenges of conducting research where the investigators follow people over a long period of time is keeping the participants involved. One of way that investigators may be able to improve participant involvement in research is to give participants the opportunity to complete their questionnaires online. Here's how the investigators think the Internet data collection system will help to keep participants involved and ultimately help to answer important questions about the effects of nutrition during pregnancy: 1. It will allow investigators to present complicated questionnaires in a way that doesn't confuse participants. For example, instead of telling participants to skip the remainder of a question if they answered no to the first part of the question, the ePRO system does the skipping for them. The result is less confusion, fewer questions to read, and less of the participant's time. 2. It provides a convenient way for participants to keep track of where to find the questionnaire, and how much they have already completed. Participants sometimes don't have time to answer all of the investigator's questions in one sitting. The ePRO system keeps track of how much participants have already done and it's ready to keep going whenever the participant has time. It also avoids the common problem of losing the questionnaires to the household paperwork pile, or worse to the recycling bin. 3. It provides timely reminders to participants. Study participants, and especially new moms, are busy and they forget to complete the questionnaires. The ePRO system can provide timely reminders encouraging participants to respond. 4. It helps participants complete the questionnaires accurately. The ePRO system has an automatic error detection ability that will alert participants to any questions they missed or completed incorrectly. Finding ways to keep participants involved in research is something that all researchers are concerned about, and ultimately it's a concern for all Canadians because the results of research are often used to make decisions about health care and the kinds of programs that governments provide. Losing any participant from the study reduces the ability of policy makers to take the best decisions and choices about what health services to fund with limited dollars. What the investigators propose is a study to determine whether Internet data entry really will keep participants involved in a longitudinal study. Previous studies have shown that the internet can be a useful tool for getting people to sign up for research and at least one small study showed that using Internet data entry can actually save money. But no researchers have actually tested whether it really does a better job than paper based questionnaires in terms of keeping participants involved. In order to answer this question, the investigators will randomly assign the current Alberta Pregnancy Outcomes and Nutrition study participants to either continue receiving the paper-based questionnaire or to start receiving the web-based surveys. The investigators will follow participants over three assessment occasions (over a period of 18 months) and observe any differences between the groups in their involvement. Because the investigators are randomly assigning participants to the two groups, differences in involvement will tell them about usefulness of Internet data entry as a participant retention tool.

Study Details

Timeline

Interventions