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Table 6 Summary of the results from ‘ data collection ’ studies included in the review (n = 26 studies)

From: Reaching the hard-to-reach: a systematic review of strategies for improving health and medical research with socially disadvantaged groups

Barriers

Strategies

Language or literacy problems

• Measures in other languages or bilingual interviewers [45, 63, 85, 90, 96, 100, 111, 113].

• Use of multi-media [48, 106], or computer data collection [48, 59, 120].

• Avoid self-administered surveys [117] use of objective data [97, 117].

• Short surveys [106].

Lack of landline telephone (for population based telephone surveys) or highly mobile population

• Mailed survey instead of telephone [90]*.

• Supplement telephone with face-to-face surveys [49, 110].

• Online surveying [52, 54, 68].

• Use of objective (e.g. tobacco sales) data instead of self-report [97, 117].

• Flexible data collection [60, 113, 114].

Mistrust of researchers and the use of the data

• Culturally trained interviewers [56, 111] or locals [55, 74, 96, 98, 105, 115, 118, 124].

 

• Need to pilot test measures [100, 114, 115].

  1. *Indicates good evidence from randomised controlled trial (see also Table 1).