Measuring migration motives with open-ended survey data: Methodological and conceptual issues.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Gillespie BJ
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8459254 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented public health crisis with broad social and economic consequences. We conducted four surveys between April and August 2020 using the graph-based open-ended survey (GOS) framework, and investigated the most pressing concerns and issues for the general public in Japan. The GOS framework is a hybrid of the two traditional survey frameworks that allows respondents to post their opinions in a free-format style, which can subsequently serve as one of the choice items for other respondents, just as in a multiple-choice survey. As a result, this framework generates an opinion graph that relates opinions and respondents. We can also construct annotated opinion graphs to achieve a higher resolution. By clustering the annotated opinion graphs, we revealed the characteristic evolution of the response patterns as well as the interconnectedness and multi-faceted nature of opinions. Substantively, our notable finding is that "social pressure," not "infection risk," was one of the major concerns of our respondents. Social pressure refers to criticism and discrimination that they anticipate receiving from others should they contract COVID-19. It is possible that the collectivist nature of Japanese culture coupled with the government's policy of relying on personal responsibility to combat COVID-19 explains some of the above findings, as the latter has led to the emergence of vigilantes. The presence of mutual surveillance can contribute to growing skepticism toward others as well as fear of ostracism, which may have negative consequences at both the societal and individual levels.
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Project description:BackgroundThe analysis presented in this paper examines the multi-year capacity of the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS).MethodsWe systematically reviewed the literature for methodological approaches in research using multiple years of the MCBS and categorized the studies by study design, use of survey sampling weights, and variance adjustments. We then replicated the approaches in an empirical demonstration using functional status (activities of daily living (ADL) and 2005-2007 MCBS data.ResultsIn the systematic review, we identified 22 pooled, 17 repeated cross-sectional, and 17 longitudinal studies. Less than half of these studies explicitly described the weighting approach or variance estimation. In the empirical demonstration, we showed that different study designs and weighting approaches will yield statistically different estimates.ConclusionThere is a variety of methodological approaches when using multiple years of the MCBS, and some of them provide biased results. Research needs to improve in describing the methods and preferred approaches for using these complex data.
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Project description:BackgroundChanging population demographics and technology developments have resulted in growing interest in the potential of consumer-facing digital health. In the United Kingdom, a £37 million (US $49 million) national digital health program delivering assisted living lifestyles at scale (dallas) aimed to deploy such technologies at scale. However, little is known about how consumers value such digital health opportunities.ObjectiveThis study explored consumers' perspectives on the potential value of digital health technologies, particularly mobile health (mHealth), to promote well-being by examining their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for such health solutions.MethodsA contingent valuation study involving a UK-wide survey that asked participants to report open-ended absolute and marginal WTP or willingness-to-accept for the gain or loss of a hypothetical mHealth app, Healthy Connections.ResultsA UK-representative cohort (n=1697) and a dallas-like (representative of dallas intervention communities) cohort (n=305) were surveyed. Positive absolute and marginal WTP valuations of the app were identified across both cohorts (absolute WTP: UK-representative cohort £196 or US $258 and dallas-like cohort £162 or US $214; marginal WTP: UK-representative cohort £160 or US $211 and dallas-like cohort £151 or US $199). Among both cohorts, there was a high prevalence of zeros for both the absolute WTP (UK-representative cohort: 467/1697, 27.52% and dallas-like cohort: 95/305, 31.15%) and marginal WTP (UK-representative cohort: 487/1697, 28.70% and dallas-like cohort: 99/305, 32.5%). In both cohorts, better general health, previous amount spent on health apps (UK-representative cohort 0.64, 95% CI 0.27 to 1.01; dallas-like cohort: 1.27, 95% CI 0.32 to 2.23), and age had a significant (P>.00) association with WTP (UK-representative cohort: -0.1, 95% CI -0.02 to -0.01; dallas-like cohort: -0.02, 95% CI -0.03 to -0.01), with younger participants willing to pay more for the app. In the UK-representative cohort, as expected, higher WTP was positively associated with income up to £30,000 or US $39,642 (0.21, 95% CI 0.14 to 0.4) and increased spending on existing phone and internet services (0.52, 95% CI 0.30 to 0.74). The amount spent on existing health apps was shown to be a positive indicator of WTP across cohorts, although the effect was marginal (UK-representative cohort 0.01, 95% CI 0.01 to 0.01; dallas-like cohort 0.01, 95% CI 0.01 to 0.02).ConclusionsThis study demonstrates that consumers value mHealth solutions that promote well-being, social connectivity, and health care control, but it is not universally embraced. For mHealth to achieve its potential, apps need to be tailored to user accessibility and health needs, and more understanding of what hinders frequent users of digital technologies and those with long-term conditions is required. This novel application of WTP in a digital health context demonstrates an economic argument for investing in upskilling the population to promote access and expedite uptake and utilization of such digital health and well-being apps.
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