Telephone and web‐based pediatric day surgery questionnaires

Abstract

PurposePatient questionnaires are popular tools for assessing and improving service quality, especially as administrators are increasingly expected to consider the patient's voice in their decision making. Despite web‐based questionnaire advantages, they have not been previously compared to telephone questionnaires for assessing quality. The purpose of this paper is to compare telephone questionnaire administration with a web‐based version.Design/methodology/approachDay surgery patients from a tertiary pediatric hospital completed a telephone interview and a web‐based questionnaire with identical questions. The appropriateness of the web version as a telephone version substitute was ascertained by comparing the number of changes in responses, non‐responses, differences in means, the number of non‐substantive responses and reliability.FindingsThe web‐based questionnaire tended towards more negative responses. The mean number of missing responses did not differ between versions, although the web‐questionnaire had more “not sure” responses. Inter‐rater reliability was acceptable.Research limitations/implicationsParents without internet access were unable to participate.Practical implicationsThe web‐based questionnaire is a good substitute for telephone‐administered questionnaires.Originality/valueThe paper shows that parents were able to rate items more candidly owing to the increase in privacy and lack of interviewer bias, which is crucial for improving health service quality.