Surveying Minorities with Limited-English Proficiency

BACKGROUND: Little is known about how modes of survey administration affect response rates and data quality among populations with limited-English proficiency (LEP). Asian Americans are a rapidly growing minority group with large numbers of LEP immigrants. OBJECTIVE: We sought to compare the response rates and data quality of interviewer-administered telephone and self-administered mail surveys among LEP Asian Americans. DESIGN: This was a randomized, cross-sectional study using a 78-item survey about quality of medical care that was given to Vietnamese, Mandarin, or Cantonese Chinese patients in their native language. MEASURES: We examined response rates and missing data by mode of survey and language groups. To examine nonresponse bias, we compared the sociodemographic characteristics of respondents and nonrespondents. To assess response patterns, we compared the internal-consistency reliability coefficients across modes and language groups. RESULTS: We achieved an overall response rate of 67% (322 responses of 479 patients surveyed). A higher response rate was achieved by phone interviews (75%) as compared with mail surveys with telephone reminder calls (59%). There were no significant differences in response rates by language group. The mean number of missing item for the mail mode was 4.14 versus 1.67 for the phone mode (P< or =0.000). There were no significant differences in missing data among the language groups and no significant differences in scale reliability coefficients by modes or language groups. CONCLUSIONS: Telephone interviews and mail surveys with phone reminder calls are feasible options to survey LEP Chinese and Vietnamese Americans. These methods may be less costly and labor-intensive ways to include LEP minorities in research.