Measuring depression in the community: a comparison of telephone and personal interviews.

Interview method effects in response to the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D) are compared among a community sample (N = 546) of adults randomly assigned to either telephone or in-person interviews. The interviews were conducted in Los Angeles during 1980. No significant differences were observed between the two interview methods in nonresponse to symptom items, preference for specific response categories, reliability, mean level of depression, or proportion classified as depressed. Furthermore, no significant interactions were found between sociodemographic characteristics and the method of interview.

[1]  Robert M. Groves,et al.  Surveys by Telephone: A National Comparison With Personal Interviews. , 1980 .

[2]  J. R. Hochstim.  A Critical Comparison of Three Strategies of Collecting Data from Households , 1967 .

[3]  Alfred C. Marcus,et al.  Response Styles in Telephone and Household Interviewing: A Field Experiment , 1980 .

[4]  Alfred J. Tuchfarber,et al.  Random Digit Dialing: A Comparison to Personal Surveys , 1978 .

[5]  J. Kirscht,et al.  INTERVIEWING A NATIONAL SAMPLE BY LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONE , 1969 .

[6]  O. J. Dunn.  Multiple Comparisons among Means , 1961 .

[7]  R R Frerichs,et al.  Prevalence of depression in Los Angeles County. , 1981, American journal of epidemiology.

[8]  J. Siemiatycki.  A comparison of mail, telephone, and home interview strategies for household health surveys. , 1979, American journal of public health.

[9]  T. Craig,et al.  Presence and persistence of depressive symptoms in patient and community populations. , 1976, The American journal of psychiatry.

[10]  L. Radloff.  The CES-D Scale , 1977 .

[11]  Robert E. Roberts,et al.  Reliability of the CES-D scale in different ethnic contexts , 1980, Psychiatry Research.

[12]  M. Weissman,et al.  Assessing depressive symptoms in five psychiatric populations: a validation study. , 1977, American journal of epidemiology.

[13]  J. Colombotos.  Personal versus telephone interviews: effect on responses. , 1969, Public health reports.

[14]  S. Shapiro,et al.  Medical Economics Survey-Methods Study: Cost-Effectiveness of Alternative Survey Strategies , 1978, Medical care.