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Collecting verbal autopsies: improving and streamlining data collection processes using electronic tablets
BACKGROUND: There is increasing interest in using verbal autopsy to produce nationally representative population-level estimates of causes of death. However, the burden of processing a large quantity of surveys collected with paper and pencil has been a barrier to scaling up verbal autopsy surveilla...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5793369/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29391038 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12963-018-0161-9 |
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author | Flaxman, Abraham D. Stewart, Andrea Joseph, Jonathan C. Alam, Nurul Alam, Sayed Saidul Chowdhury, Hafizur Mooney, Meghan D. Rampatige, Rasika Remolador, Hazel Sanvictores, Diozele Serina, Peter T. Streatfield, Peter Kim Tallo, Veronica Murray, Christopher J. L. Hernandez, Bernardo Lopez, Alan D. Riley, Ian Douglas |
author_facet | Flaxman, Abraham D. Stewart, Andrea Joseph, Jonathan C. Alam, Nurul Alam, Sayed Saidul Chowdhury, Hafizur Mooney, Meghan D. Rampatige, Rasika Remolador, Hazel Sanvictores, Diozele Serina, Peter T. Streatfield, Peter Kim Tallo, Veronica Murray, Christopher J. L. Hernandez, Bernardo Lopez, Alan D. Riley, Ian Douglas |
author_sort | Flaxman, Abraham D. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: There is increasing interest in using verbal autopsy to produce nationally representative population-level estimates of causes of death. However, the burden of processing a large quantity of surveys collected with paper and pencil has been a barrier to scaling up verbal autopsy surveillance. Direct electronic data capture has been used in other large-scale surveys and can be used in verbal autopsy as well, to reduce time and cost of going from collected data to actionable information. METHODS: We collected verbal autopsy interviews using paper and pencil and using electronic tablets at two sites, and measured the cost and time required to process the surveys for analysis. From these cost and time data, we extrapolated costs associated with conducting large-scale surveillance with verbal autopsy. RESULTS: We found that the median time between data collection and data entry for surveys collected on paper and pencil was approximately 3 months. For surveys collected on electronic tablets, this was less than 2 days. For small-scale surveys, we found that the upfront costs of purchasing electronic tablets was the primary cost and resulted in a higher total cost. For large-scale surveys, the costs associated with data entry exceeded the cost of the tablets, so electronic data capture provides both a quicker and cheaper method of data collection. CONCLUSIONS: As countries increase verbal autopsy surveillance, it is important to consider the best way to design sustainable systems for data collection. Electronic data capture has the potential to greatly reduce the time and costs associated with data collection. For long-term, large-scale surveillance required by national vital statistical systems, electronic data capture reduces costs and allows data to be available sooner. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5793369 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-57933692018-02-12 Collecting verbal autopsies: improving and streamlining data collection processes using electronic tablets Flaxman, Abraham D. Stewart, Andrea Joseph, Jonathan C. Alam, Nurul Alam, Sayed Saidul Chowdhury, Hafizur Mooney, Meghan D. Rampatige, Rasika Remolador, Hazel Sanvictores, Diozele Serina, Peter T. Streatfield, Peter Kim Tallo, Veronica Murray, Christopher J. L. Hernandez, Bernardo Lopez, Alan D. Riley, Ian Douglas Popul Health Metr Research BACKGROUND: There is increasing interest in using verbal autopsy to produce nationally representative population-level estimates of causes of death. However, the burden of processing a large quantity of surveys collected with paper and pencil has been a barrier to scaling up verbal autopsy surveillance. Direct electronic data capture has been used in other large-scale surveys and can be used in verbal autopsy as well, to reduce time and cost of going from collected data to actionable information. METHODS: We collected verbal autopsy interviews using paper and pencil and using electronic tablets at two sites, and measured the cost and time required to process the surveys for analysis. From these cost and time data, we extrapolated costs associated with conducting large-scale surveillance with verbal autopsy. RESULTS: We found that the median time between data collection and data entry for surveys collected on paper and pencil was approximately 3 months. For surveys collected on electronic tablets, this was less than 2 days. For small-scale surveys, we found that the upfront costs of purchasing electronic tablets was the primary cost and resulted in a higher total cost. For large-scale surveys, the costs associated with data entry exceeded the cost of the tablets, so electronic data capture provides both a quicker and cheaper method of data collection. CONCLUSIONS: As countries increase verbal autopsy surveillance, it is important to consider the best way to design sustainable systems for data collection. Electronic data capture has the potential to greatly reduce the time and costs associated with data collection. For long-term, large-scale surveillance required by national vital statistical systems, electronic data capture reduces costs and allows data to be available sooner. BioMed Central 2018-02-01 /pmc/articles/PMC5793369/ /pubmed/29391038 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12963-018-0161-9 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Flaxman, Abraham D. Stewart, Andrea Joseph, Jonathan C. Alam, Nurul Alam, Sayed Saidul Chowdhury, Hafizur Mooney, Meghan D. Rampatige, Rasika Remolador, Hazel Sanvictores, Diozele Serina, Peter T. Streatfield, Peter Kim Tallo, Veronica Murray, Christopher J. L. Hernandez, Bernardo Lopez, Alan D. Riley, Ian Douglas Collecting verbal autopsies: improving and streamlining data collection processes using electronic tablets |
title | Collecting verbal autopsies: improving and streamlining data collection processes using electronic tablets |
title_full | Collecting verbal autopsies: improving and streamlining data collection processes using electronic tablets |
title_fullStr | Collecting verbal autopsies: improving and streamlining data collection processes using electronic tablets |
title_full_unstemmed | Collecting verbal autopsies: improving and streamlining data collection processes using electronic tablets |
title_short | Collecting verbal autopsies: improving and streamlining data collection processes using electronic tablets |
title_sort | collecting verbal autopsies: improving and streamlining data collection processes using electronic tablets |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5793369/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29391038 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12963-018-0161-9 |
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