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Personal and telephone interview surveys were conducted simultaneously during 1981 in the same area (four counties in the area of Tampa Bay, Florida) and utilizing the same interview schedule. Following completion of the surveys, validity checks were made with the medical providers reported by a subsample of respondents to each mode. The telephone survey yielded a lower response rate but cost less than half the personal interview. There was some evidence of nonresponse bias in the telephone survey, and some relatively minor differences in responses were found between

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Substantial underreporting is typical in interviewing respondents on their drug use and other sensitive behaviors. This chapter reviews established strategies, self-administered questionnaires and indirect questioning techniques, for increasing the willingness of respondents to report stigmatizing behaviors. While these methods improve reporting, each has shortcomings and burdens which limit their effectiveness. A new computer-based self-interviewing approach which incorporates recorded audio playback of questions offers improved self-administered interviewing. The chapter discusses this technology, audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (audio-CASI), describing its features and positive results from the early research tests of the method.

The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA) Is the nation's primary data source for information on the scope and dimensions of drug abuse in the United States. To improve data collection, the NHSDA was converted to a computer-assisted interview (CAl) format in 1999. This paper reports on the research that was done to guide the conversion. The main focus of the paper is on a large (n=1,982) field experiment that examined different audio computerassisted self-interviewing (ACASI) procedures in the fourth quarter of 1997. This field experiment showed that ACASlls likely to increase reporting of drug use among youth: that respondents can, on their own, correct inconsistencies in responses that are detected by the computer: and that ACASI eases the response task for poor readers and less well educated respondents.

A summary of the results of a series of studies of nonresponse and measurement error in the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA) is given in this chapter. Two studies not previously reported, the Skip Pattern Experiment and the Census Match Study, are the primary focus of the chapter. The Skip Pattern Experiment involved a test of a modified NHSDA questionnaire that made extensive use of skip patterns in drug use questions. Compared to the standard NHSDA method, which avoids skip patterns, the modified questionnaire tended to produce lower rates of reported drug use. The Census Match Study involved linking 1990 NHSDA nonrespondent cases with data from the 1990 Decennial Census. Household and individual data for NHSDA nonrespondents were obtained from the Census and used to characterize NHSDA nonresponse patterns in detail. A multilevel logistic model of response propensity identified the important predictors of nonresponse, including characteristics of the sampled person, the selected household, the neighborhood, and the interviewer.

The National Center for Health Statistics is embarked on a major project to combine the respective strengths of cognitive psychologists and survey researchers in a common effort to improve the design of survey questionnaires. This methodological research is conducted within the framework of the National Health Interview Survey, the nation's main source of information on the health of civilians. Better quality of such information--from recall to response rates--can aid both scientific inquiry and public policy.