The rapid expansion of mobile phone ownership provides a platform for low-cost, real-time data collection in low- and middle-income countries. The purpose of this study was to determine which remote data collection mode, Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) or CATI-to- Interactive Voice Recording (IVR) (referred to as Hybrid IVR), is better suited to monitor family planning progress in Burkina Faso, based on a comparison of sample representativeness, data quality, and cost. In November 2017, using a randomized cross-over design, we called women in Burkina Faso who provided a mobile phone number during Performance Monitoring and Accountability 2020 (PMA2020) data collection in December 2016. Callers who received CATI calls had a higher response rate and was completed by a more representative sample than Hybrid IVR. CATI also had higher reliability and less missing data. This study justifies the use of CATI over Hybrid IVR for population-level remote data collection in West Africa where literacy is low.
February 21, 2019