Novel and Emerging Strategies for Longitudinal Data Collection

Key wordsFollow-up strategies, response rate, postal mailing, telephone interviews, electronic mail (e-mail), two-way short message service (SMS), smartphone applicationsAbstractPurpose: To describe novel and emerging strategies practiced globally in research to improve longitudinal data collection.Organizing Construct: In research studies, numerous strategies such as telephone interviews, postal mailing, online questionnaires, and electronic mail are traditionally utilized in longitudinal data collection. However, due to technological advances, novel and emerging strategies have been applied to longitudinal data collection, such as two-way short message service, smartphone applications (or "apps"), retrieval capabilities applied to the electronic medical record, and an adapted cloud interface. In this review, traditional longitudinal data collection strategies are briefly described, emerging and novel strategies are detailed and explored, and information regarding the impact of novel methods on participant response rates, the timeliness of participant responses, and cost is provided. We further discuss how these novel and emerging strategies affect longitudinal data collection and advance research, specifically nursing research.Conclusions: Evidence suggests that the novel and emerging longitudinal data collection strategies discussed in this review are valuable approaches to consider. These strategies facilitate collecting longitudinal research data to better understand a variety of health-related conditions. Future studies, including nursing research, should consider using novel and emerging strategies to advance longitudinal data collection.Clinical Relevance: A better understanding of novel and emerging longitudinal data collection strategies will ultimately improve longitudinal data collection as well as foster research efforts. Nurse researchers, along with all researchers, must be aware of and consider implementing novel and emerging strategies to ensure future healthcare research success.Identifying and implementing effective novel and emerging strategies to promote longitudinal data collection globally is an essential component of research study design and management. Given the cost of conducting and completing research and limited research funding support, effective and efficient strategies to collect longitudinal data are a research priority (Robinson, Dennison, Wayman, Pronovost, & Needham, 2007). Numerous strategies, including telephone interviews, postal mailings, electronic mail (e-mail), and online questionnaires (Internet), are traditionally used to sustain longitudinal research data collection (Herzberg et al., 2011); however, in any research study, implementing traditional methods for longitudinal data collection can be challenging due to various issues such as invalid telephone numbers and incorrect mailing addresses of the study participants. Although participant response rates vary by study and the strategies used, evidence suggests that participant response rates are declining across most of the commonly used traditional strategies for longitudinal data collection (Hartge, 1999; Hohwuet al., 2013; Hox & de Leeuw, 1994; Steeh, Kurgis, Cannon, & DeWit, 2001). Therefore, identifying and considering the implementation of novel and emerging strategies into research studies that include longitudinal data collection are important.A potentially detrimental consequence of ineffective strategies for longitudinal data collection is low participant response rates, which are the percentages of participants that return longitudinal data. These low participant response rates increase the potential for bias because limited or no data are available on nonrespondents, research participants who do not return the data. Incomplete or no ascertainment of longitudinal data may negatively impact or bias the final study results, threaten internal and external validity, or limit the ability to draw inferences if (a) reasons for incomplete or missing data are linked to the outcome of interest, (b) nonrespondents significantly differ from the retained participants, (c) nonrespondent rates differ substantially between comparison groups, and (d) nonrespondent rates impact the estimates of effect through the lack of statistical power (Akl et al. …