Technical Report - Donegal Traveller's Project

Health Survey FindingsSoftware Preparation• Three applications were designed. The first allowed the coordinators to pre-code questionnaires forthe Peer Researchers with identifying details. The second was for the Peer Researchers to conductthe interview and the third was to upload the finished questionnaires to the central server viamodem.• The program was written in Adobe Actionscript 3.0.• The first program – Setup - was used only by the coordinators to set up the day’s questionnaires foreach family to be interviewed. This produced an XML (Extensible Markup Language) file for use laterby the Questionnaire program.• The second program – Questionnaire - was designed to be user friendly with minimal operatingrequirements, enabling Peer Researchers to use the computers without intensive training. Theprogram selected which question to present next, based on previously answered questions, so therespondents were only asked questions appropriate to their circumstances, according to presetbranching rules. The program selected which family member present was to be chosen to be thesubject of the survey part of the questionnaire, according the predetermined sampling design andbased on the data already inputted at that particular interview. The responses to the questions werestored in the XML file, ready for uploading.• The third program – Upload - required the coordinator to connect to the internet using a USBmobile modem and the interviews were then uploaded to a secure central server where the XMLfiles were processed into a SQL (Structured Query Language) database.Sampling StrategyThe census contained 3 principal sections:Section A: Family census, was completed on behalf of all respondent households by the principalinformant, who was usually the mother. This included basic information on the age, sex, marital statusetc. for all family members.Section B: Children’s health status and utilisation for a selected child aged 5, 9 or 14 years, and proxyquestions, which were completed by the mother as appropriate.It was decided to obtain detailed information on all Traveller children aged 5, 9 or 14, with a set ofcommon questions, together with age-appropriate questions. If there was more than 1 child of theseages, or twins/triplets, a random choice of 1 child was made. Children of other ages were not surveyed.Section C: Where there were no children of these exact ages in the family, an adult was surveyedon a random basis, and randomly either the health status or health utilisation questionnaire wasadministered. Where there was only one adult (aged 15+) he/she was chosen.As far as possible the individual himself or herself answered the questions; alternatively a subset of thequestions was answered on the individual’s behalf by the principal informant.55