This article was originally published in August 2017.
The Queensland preventative health survey is conducted annually by telephone. This survey is important in informing public health policy, and in targeting and promoting healthy lifestyle strategies in that State. It is a cost-effective way to collect this information; until recently, a random sample was produced from a list of landline telephone numbers produced by Telstra, the Australia’s national communications carrier.
However, in 2015, the survey incorporated both mobile and landline telephone numbers from the list-based sampling frame. Mobile and landline respondents were compared to assess if there were any potential bias in landline-only surveys in the context of public health surveillance.
In a paper published in Preventive Medicine Reports in May 2017, Life Course Centre Fellows Dr Bernard Baffour and Joshua Bon, LCC Chief Investigators and Portfolio Leaders Professor Michele Haynes and Professor Mark Western, together with co-researchers Tim Roselli and Susan Clemens, found significant differences in all health prevalence estimates that were considered from 2015 survey results (alcohol consumption, body mass index, smoking, and physical activity).
They conclude that introducing mobile telephones into the survey is important in order to reduce bias in health prevalence estimates. Importantly, the addition of mobiles into the Queensland preventive health survey occurred before population trends were significantly affected.
Read the paper, called ‘Including mobile-only telephone users in a statewide preventive health survey — Differences in the prevalence of health risk factors and impact on trends’, here.