A comparison of mail and face-to-face responses in a dual- mode survey of physicians

The National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) is an annual survey of officebased physicians and visits to their practices. Since its inception, the survey has been conducted face-to-face, but in order to provide better estimates of physician adoption and use of electronic medical records (EMR), the original sample was augmented with a supplemental sample of physicians who reported EMR-based content from NAMCS through a mail questionnaire. Mail and face-to-face survey data from 2008 were combined for the first time to produce dual-mode estimates. This paper compares responses and item nonresponse by mode according to physician and practice characteristics. Although mail survey respondents were less likely to provide certain write-in numeric responses than face-to-face respondents, most results were comparable across modes.