Impact of sampling and data collection methods on maternity survey response: a randomised controlled trial of paper and push-to-web surveys and a concurrent social media survey

Harrison, Siân; Alderdice, Fiona; Quigley, Maria A.

doi:10.1186/s12874-023-01833-8

Table 1 Study characteristics of the 2020 NMS

From: Impact of sampling and data collection methods on maternity survey response: a randomised controlled trial of paper and push-to-web surveys and a concurrent social media survey

	Paper survey (RCT arm 1)	Push-to-web survey (RCT arm 2)	Social media survey
Design
Survey design	Cross-sectional population-based postal survey	Cross-sectional population-based postal survey	Cross-sectional online survey
Sampling method	Random sample	Random sample	Self-selected sample
Allocation ratio	Simple 1:1 ratio	Simple 1:1 ratio	NA
Randomisation and blinding
Sequence generation	Stratified block randomisation using Microsoft Access VBA	Stratified block randomisation using Microsoft Access VBA	NA
Allocation concealment mechanism	None	None	NA
Implementation	By ONS	By ONS	NA
Blinding	None	None	NA
Participants
Sampling frame	All births registered in England between 11^th-24^th May 2020	All births registered in England between 11^th-24^th May 2020	None
Eligibility criteria	Gave birth in England during May 2020 Aged ≥ 16 years Living in England when birth registered	Gave birth in England during May 2020 Aged ≥ 16 years Living in England when birth registered	Gave birth in UK between March and August 2020 Aged ≥ 16 years Living in UK when birth registered
Identification	By ONS (from birth registration records)	By ONS (from birth registration records)	Self-identified (through online adverts)
Recruitment period	November 2020 – March 2021	November 2020 – March 2021	November 2020 – February 2021
Target sample size	8,025	8,025	No target sample size
Intervention
Type of survey invitation	Postal invitation with paper questionnaire (standard method) ^*	Postal invitation with link to online survey (push-to-web method) ^*	Advert (not randomised)
Outcomes
Primary	Response rate	Response rate	NA ^**
Secondary	Respondent representativeness External validity of prevalence estimates Cost	Respondent representativeness External validity of prevalence estimates Cost	Respondent representativeness External validity of prevalence estimates Cost

^* In the paper survey, women received a paper questionnaire with the option to take part online; in the push-to-web survey, women received an invitation to take part online but a paper questionnaire was included with the final reminder
^**Response rate in the social media survey could not be calculated due to the denominator being unknown although the number of responses was presented

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ISSN: 1471-2288

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