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![[Read Comment]](/icons/misc/sectionDOWN.gif){kind=icon}
PDAs versus Paper for Survey Data Collection
PDAs and Point of Care Data Collection
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Fred Tudiver, Johnson City, TN, USA physician, Dept Family Medicine, East Tennessee State University
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The paper by Galliger et al describes a study that compared a PDA versus paper as data collection methods for survey data. However, this study was unique in that the plan was to remotely upload the PDA-collected data via the internet and mail the surveys. Interestingly, all but one of the 22 practices in the study were forced to mail the PDAs themselves due to institutional firewalls! This is a great example of how security can get in the way of good research, yet, of course we need the security. Anyway, the study was nicely done, and it came up with a couple of surprises and a couple of non-surprises. The surprises: The first one is that only 3% of the PDA collected data had errors of omission versus 35% of those gathered on paper. I would have predicted a smaller difference between the two. Perhaps this occurred as a result of the investigators designing a forced choice method for the PDA collected data, where the responder could not continue the survey without entering a response. The second surprise was that the overall return rate for paper was better than for PDAs (94% vs. 82% respectively). I would have guessed the opposite, but as mentioned above, most of the subjects had to mail the full PDAs back to the research center. This is certainly a bit more of a chore than just uploading the data, or tossing a survey into an envelope. The non-surprises: The first is that half of the 44 recruited physicians did not enroll in the study due to lack of resources for writing an IRB application, even though they all belonged to the AAFP National Research Network! This is a sad commentary on how complex doing research is (especially in non-academic practices), yet we cannot turn the clock back of course. The second non-surprise is that several PDAs were lost or stolen and that “technical difficulties” occurred resulting in lower return rates than expected (the inability to upload from most of the study sites). We have found this in a PDA study at our center where simple things like spent batteries with resulting lost data (and no backup) weakened the power of the study results. Competing interests: None declared |
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Wilson D Pace, Denver, CO Physician, Univ. of Colorado
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The article by Galliher et. al. adds to the growing literature on the problems and benefits of electronic point of care data collection. The article quotes from an article I helped write concerning the area in general. The referenced article (Pace,W and Staton, E) was primarily concerned with physician point of care data collection when talking about the use of PDAs versus pen tablets or other computers. The current paper was attempting to use PDAs for patient level data collection with an elderly population (people in routine need of a pneumococcal vaccination.) This would not be the ideal group on which to test a PDA data collection method as the screen real estate is very small and familiarity with PDAs low in that population. For this population I believe the above referenced paper would point to a pen-tablet as the preferred electronic data collection method. That being said, the CHECH Network and Ardith Olsen have described very effective use of PDAs with adolescent data collection for clinical use. They did physically attach the PDAs to a clip board so they would not walk off and had little to no problem with lost PDAs. The main point of the Pace/Staton Annals article was to carefully match your data collection methods with the intent and population from which data would be collected. Perhaps this was not done as well as it could have been in the current project. Of note- the data reliabilty for those surveys that were completed was much better using electronic methods- as would be expected. Competing interests: None declared |
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