Assessing the potential to combine attitude tracking and health campaign evaluation surveys
Lauren P. Hollier A , Simone Pettigrew B D , Carolyn Minto C , Terry Slevin B C and Mark Strickland CA Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University, Kent Street, Bentley, Perth WA 6102, Australia.
B School of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Curtin University, Kent Street, Bentley, Perth WA 6102, Australia.
C Cancer Council WA, 420 Bagot Road, Subiaco, Perth WA 6008, Australia.
D Corresponding author. Email: simone.pettigrew@curtin.edu.au
Health Promotion Journal of Australia 27(2) 170-173 https://doi.org/10.1071/HE15100
Submitted: 12 August 2015 Accepted: 21 December 2015 Published: 6 April 2016
Abstract
Issue addressed: Online surveys are becoming increasingly popular in health research because of the low cost and fast completion time. A large proportion of online survey costs are allocated to setup and administration expenses, which suggests that conducting fewer, longer surveys would be a cost-effective approach. The current study assessed whether the incorporation of a health campaign evaluation survey within a longitudinal attitudes and behaviours tracking survey produced different outcomes compared with the separate administration of the evaluation survey.
Methods: Data were collected via an online panel, with 688 respondents completing the combined survey and 657 respondents completing the evaluation-only survey. Regression analyses were conducted to examine whether survey type was related to the campaign evaluation results.
Results: Those who completed the combined survey perceived the campaign advertisement to be more personally relevant than those completing the evaluation-only survey. There were no differences in results relating to campaign awareness and reported behavioural change as a result of campaign exposure.
Conclusions: There were minimal differences between results obtained from combining an attitude/behaviour tracking survey with a campaign evaluation survey. Any priming or order effects were limited to respondents’ cognitive responses to the advertisement.
So what?: The results suggest that health practitioners with limited resources available for tracking and evaluation research may be able to maximise outcomes by administering fewer, longer surveys.
Key words: online survey, priming, questionnaire design, survey length.
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