Introduction and aims: Interactive voice response (IVR), a computer-based interviewing technique, can be used within a computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) survey to increase privacy and the accuracy of reports of sensitive attitudes and behaviours. Previous research using the 2005 National Alcohol Survey indicated no overall significant differences between IVR and CATI responses to alcohol-related problems and alcohol dependence. To determine if this result holds for demographic subgroups that could respond differently to modes of data collection, this study compares the prevalence rates of lifetime and last-year alcohol-related problems by gender, ethnicity, age and income subgroups obtained by IVR versus continuous CATI interviewing.
Design and methods: As part of the 2005 National Alcohol Survey, subsamples of English-speaking respondents were randomly assigned to an IVR group that received an embedded IVR module on alcohol-related problems (n = 450 lifetime drinkers) and a control group that were asked identical alcohol-related problem items using continuous CATI (n = 432 lifetime drinkers).
Results: Overall, there were few significant associations. Among lifetime drinkers, higher rates of legal problems were found for white and higher income respondents in the IVR group. For last-year drinkers, a higher percentage of indicators of alcohol dependence was found for Hispanic respondents and women respondents in the CATI group.
Discussion and conclusion: Data on alcohol problems collected by CATI provide largely comparable results to those from an embedded IVR module. Thus, incorporation of IVR technology in a CATI interview does not appear strongly indicated even for several key subgroups.