Reviewer's report
Title:Piloting a computer assisted telephone interview: The FUCHSIA Women's
Study
Version:3Date:2 September 2014
Reviewer: Richard Kwok
Reviewer's report:
This paper details the methods undertaken to develop and pilot test a computer
assisted telephone interview. Overall, this paper is a useful contribution to the
literature as it provides a how-to step-by-step introduction to developing
questionnaires for CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interview). The authors
correctly assert that there is a paucity of literature regarding the conduct of pilot
tests for questionnaires. This information is useful for any number of
questionnaire based data collection methods.
Major Compulsory Revisions
Pg. 3, line 18. The paper doesn’t necessarily describe any particular challenge
that would apply more globally to a general audience. Were there any challenges
faced that could be generalized? Were the recruitment methods sufficient in
attracting the proper distribution to accurately represent the cases/controls?
Pg. 4, lines 34-39. It would be interesting to see what data sources were used to
develop the survey instruments. Was the instrument revised from an existing
questionnaire? Which did they use? From colleagues and collaborators? From
large national data collection efforts like NHANES
(http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes.htm)? From the PhenX Toolkit
(https://www.phenxtoolkit.org/)? From another source? This would be helpful for
investigators to see the steps needed to put together a questionnaire and before
it is programmed into a CATI.
Pg. 4, lines 40-46. What was the timing of these steps? Were these followed in
order?
Pg. 5, line 53: How did you come up with the eligibility age range (20-50 years)
for the pilot participants? The age ranges mentioned vary from 20-35 years (pg.
3, line 25) to 22-45 years (pg. 4, line 26).
Pg. 5, lines 67-70. Do you know what the recruitment rate was? How many
individuals did you reach to get these 52 individuals? Are there any power
calculations or an a priori target sample size you were trying to reach (and
why?)? or was this more of a convenience sample approach?
Pg. 6, line 86. The Pilot Study 2 participants received a $10 remuneration. Was
the Pilot Study 1 participants provided a remuneration as well? If not, was there a
rationale for not providing remuneration to one group vs. another?
Pg. 6, line 95. Who were these 13 women who performed the usability test?
Where these the same women from Pilot Study 1 or 2? What was significant
about these women?
Pg. 7, line 102-103. Discuss the significance of making the participants aware of
the purpose of the study and encouraging feedback during the interview. Would
this approach extend the length of the interview and potentially bias the answers
provided?
Pg. 8, lines 132-140. Talk about any potential constraints from having only 52
individuals in the pilot test. Many cells in Table 1 were <= 5. Are these small cell
sizes significant especially in light of the fact that the main study is interested in
cancer survivors with fertility problems (of which the pilot tests only had 1
individual characterized as such – and who only participated in the first pilot).
Pg. 9, line 154. Are there any correlation statistics available for how women
reported their age at events between the first and second pilot? How do you
define “consistent”? 0.8? 0.5? 1.0?
Discretionary Revisions
Table 1. Note that the participant with unknown source participated in both the
1st and 2nd pilot.
Figure 1. Add a timeline / overall timeframe for each step of the figure to get a
general sense of how long this should typically take? Are there any shortcuts?
Critical steps that must be taken?
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests'