Can Telephone Interview Be Considered as an Appropriate Data Collection Method in Health Research?

One of the most important challenges for researchers is deciding on how to collect their data. There are various views on using telephone interviews. Conducting telephone interviews on women of 40 years old and older in Isfahan about mammography screening behavior showed that it could be an appropriate method for data collection when there is a combination of effective communication process and appropriate designing for the telephone interview. The advantages of telephone interviewing for data gathering include coverage of more geographic regions, using economic and human resources more efficiently, improving the quality of data collection, maintaining interviewer security, more speed in data gathering and a more comfortable feeling.The most important challenges of telephone interviewing include lack of visual cues to achieve the confidence of the interviewee, lack of creation and maintaining a clear communication, debate about unrelated questions and opposition of other family members with participating in the interview. Evidence suggests that prior preparation for telephone interviewing might increase the success rate.