No abstract

Cognitive interviewing is a common method used to evaluate survey questions. This study compares traditional cognitive interviewing methods with crowdsourcing, or “tapping into the collective intelligence of the public to complete a task.” Crowdsourcing may provide researchers with access to a diverse pool of potential participants in a very timely and cost-efficient way. Exploratory work found that crowdsourcing participants, with self-administered data collection, may be a viable alternative, or addition, to traditional pretesting methods. Using three crowdsourcing designs (TryMyUI, Amazon Mechanical Turk, and Facebook), we compared the participant characteristics, costs, and quantity and quality of data with traditional laboratory-based cognitive interviews. Results suggest that crowdsourcing and self-administered protocols may be a viable way to collect survey pretesting information, as participants were able to complete the tasks and provide useful information; however, complex tasks may require the skills of an interviewer to administer unscripted probes.

Objective: Sobriety checkpoints have strong empirical and theoretical support as an intervention to reduce alcohol-involved motor vehicle crashes. The purpose of this study was to examine whether checkpoint size (the number of police officers) and checkpoint duration (the amount of time in operation) affect associations between individual checkpoints and subsequent alcohol-related crash incidence.Method: Queensland Police Service provided latitude-longitude coordinates and date and time data for all breath tests that occurred in Brisbane, Australia, from January 2012 to June 2018. We applied hierarchical cluster analysis to the latitude-longitude coordinates for breath tests, identifying checkpoints as clusters of ≥25 breath tests conducted by ≥3 breath testing devices over a duration of 3 to 8 hours. Generalized linear autoregressive moving average (GLARMA) models related counts of alcoholinvolved motor vehicle crashes to the number of checkpoints conducted per week, as well as 1 week prior and 2 weeks prior.Results: A total of 3420 alcohol-related crashes occurred and 2069 checkpoints were conducted in Brisbane over the 6.5-year (339-week) study period. On average, checkpoints included a mean of 266.0 breath tests (SD = 216.3), 16.4 devices (SD = 13.7), and were 286.3 minutes in duration (SD = 104.2). Each 10 additional checkpoints were associated with a 12% decrease in crash incidence at a lag of 1 week (IRR = 0.88; 95%CI: 0.80, 0.97). We detected no differential associations according to checkpoint size or duration.Conclusions: Sobriety checkpoints are associated with fewer alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes for around 1 week. Checkpoint size and duration do not appear to affect this relationship.

Researchers commonly rely on relatively small convenience samples for cognitive pretesting questionnaires. Methods used to recruit these samples vary depending on the population of interest, study timeline, study budget, and other factors. Over the past decade, one method that has become popular because of these considerations is online classified advertisements (e.g., Craigslist ads). A concern with the use of this recruitment method is that it leads to a set of participants who repeatedly participate in cognitive interview studies, changing the cognitive processes used in interviews, potentially resulting in misleading findings. Advertisements placed on social networking sites, such as Facebook, may give researchers more control over targeting recruitment advertisements, produce more participant diversity, and reduce the prevalence of ''professional participants'' who respond to ads. Recent research has shown that Craigslist and Facebook advertisements do result in selection pools with different demographic characteristics and experiences as study participants. However, we are not familiar with any research that has attempted to address concerns about data quality as a result of (a) professional participant cognitive bias or (b) recruitment method. Using data from two studies for which recruitment advertisements were placed on Craigslist and Facebook, we assess whether there are differences in recruitment speed, demographic diversity, the extent to which professional participants comprise the recruitment pool, and the extent to which a geographically dispersed recruitment pool can be attained. Evidence across the measures of quality was mixed. Facebook advertisements resulted in much faster recruitment than Craigslist advertisements among an online population in which the study topic was virtual worlds and avatars (Study 1), but the inverse was true among an older population in which the study topic was long-term care (Study 2). Mixed evidence was also found for relationships between recruitment platform and demographic composition. In Study 1, we found relationships between recruitment method and education, ethnicity, and race. In Study 2, there was only a relationship between recruitment platform and marital status and employment status. Furthermore, Facebook recruits were significantly younger than Craigslist recruits in Study 1, while in Study 2, Craigslist recruits were younger. Downloaded from Professional participants were identified in the recruitment pools when the concept was operationalized as attempts to deceive the researchers in how they learned about the study. No evidence was found, however, when professional participant was operationalized as the number of times one had participated in research in the past 12 months. Finally, while no comparison is available between platforms, we found that Facebook advertisements resulted in a geographically dispersed recruitment pool with per capita rates ranging from 0.05 to 1.6 and only one state having no representation. The findings from this research wil...

BackgroundPredicted shortages in the supply of neurologists may limit patients’ access to and quality of care for neurological disorders. Retaining neurologists already in practice provides one opportunity to support the overall supply of practicing neurologists. Understanding factors associated with professional life satisfaction (and dissatisfaction) and implementing policies to enhance satisfaction may encourage neurologists to remain in clinical practice. In this paper, we present results from the first study examining factors associated with professional life satisfaction among a large sample of U.S, neurologists.MethodsWe collaborated with the AAN to survey a sample of U.S. neurologists about their professional life satisfaction. Analyses examined the association of physician and practice characteristics with aspects of professional life satisfaction, including satisfaction with their career in medicine, medical specialty, current position, relationship with colleagues, relationship with patients, work/life balance, and pay.ResultsThe study population consisted of 625 neurologists. In multivariate regression analyses, no single group or population stratum indicated high (or low) responses to all aspects of satisfaction. Older neurologists reported higher satisfaction with career, specialty, and relationship with patients than younger neurologists. Female neurologists had significantly lower satisfaction with pay than male neurologists. Neurologists who spent more time in research and teaching had greater satisfaction with specialty, relationship with colleagues, and relationship with patients than those spending no time in research. Neurologists who practiced in small cities/rural areas reported lower satisfaction across multiple dimensions than those practicing in large urban areas. Neurologists in solo practice had greater satisfaction with the relationship with their patients, but lower satisfaction with pay.ConclusionsSatisfaction is a multidimensional construct that is associated with physician and practice characteristics. Enhancing professional life satisfaction among neurologists requires multiple strategies, such as promoting comparable wages for men and women, providing collaboration and research opportunities, and providing resources for small and rural practices.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-017-2343-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.