Collecting data by telephone from low-income African Americans

The purposes of this report are to (a) describe challenges associated with collecting data by telephone from 368 urban-dwelling African Americans and (b) describe characteristics of easy-to-reach participants. Data collected through four telephone interviews were used for these analyses. Over 1 year, 55 (15.0%) participants had at least one telephone number change; 75 (20.4%) had their telephone disconnected. The mean (±SD) number of attempted telephone calls per participant was 9.5 (±4.0). Those who were easy to reach, requiring eight or fewer call attempts over 1 year (n = 170; 46%), were older (t = 3.0, p = .003), female (χ2 = 4.6, p = .03), and currently not working (χ2 = 7.9, p = .005).