Hawaii to launch first health media survey via text message

This week the Hawaii Department of Health is launching its first-ever health and health media survey to learn more about how state residents access and respond to health-related information. It will include questions about health behaviors, interest in certain health services, perceptions of health media campaigns and media-consumption patterns.

The survey, which is expected to start Tuesday and remain open for several weeks, will use a new method — text messaging — to reach a larger audience.

Emily Subialka, an associate director at Professional Data Analysts, a program evaluation firm that supports health initiatives and helped develop the survey, said that text message campaigns are a cost-effective alternative that reach more people than traditional survey methods such as email, physical mail or phone-banking.

“With telephone calls, which is a very common method, there’s a lot of calling that has to happen, and the intake takes time,” Subialka said. “With mailed surveys, there’s the costs of postage and letters.”

She said another common and cost-effective source of survey information is research panels, but cautioned that they have limitations, especially in smaller geographies like Hawaii.

“There may not be enough people in these existing panels to hear from as many people as you need to,” she said.

One 2015 study found that surveys conducted by text result in more precise answers than those conducted by phone. But a 2021 research paper on COVID-19 contact-tracing found that SMS-linked surveys had low participation and were ineffective for contact identification, highlighting the importance of phone calls in public health efforts.

Text surveys distributed by health agencies typically include a unique link to a web-based survey that participants can access through their mobile devices. 

Subialka said the data from the survey responses will be stored securely on PDA’s virtual encrypted drives on its private servers.

“Identifying information will also only be used to contact participants and then those who choose to receive an incentive from the survey, we’ll provide an email address for that,” she said. “But all survey responses are confidential and won’t be connected to their identifying information.”

Lola Irvin, an administrator in the DOH’s Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Division, told StateScoop in an email that the health department will use survey responses to improve its public health communication.