Survey Research Program
The Group Health Research Institute (GHRI) Survey Research Program specializes in custom research consultation, design, and data collection.
Established as an operational unit within GHRI in 1988, the program has 12 full-time staff, plus 12 to 40 part-time telephone interviewers and research specialists for mail and data-entry. At any given time, there are 15 to 25 active survey research service projects.
Survey staff have experience working with diverse populations and a variety of topic areas, including obesity, adolescent health, smoking cessation, mental health, diabetes, chronic pain, childhood immunization, HIV medication adherence, women's health, domestic violence, substance abuse.
Survey staff use rigorous quality-assurance protocols on each project, reviewing questionnaires and study procedures to assure use of appropriate methods and questions. Data-collection and delivery of data files and reports are also monitored closely.
Recent response rates for cross-sectional, case-control, and baseline cohort studies are 60-85 percent, depending on the topic, study population, and data-collection mode (mail or telephone). For longitudinal follow-up surveys, response rates are higher—80-95 percent.
The program also has experience and expertise in multimode recruitment, mail or self-administered questionnaire development, mail survey administration, Web surveys, focus groups, qualitative personal interviewing, data entry, and scanning.