Locating and Surveying Medicaid and AFDC Beneficiaries

As part of the field testing effort for the Consumer Assessment of Health Plan Study (or CAHPS), RAND tested both telephone and mixed mode (mail followed by telephone) methods to locate and survey adult and child Medicaid and AFDC beneficiaries. As expected, the mixed mode approach was more successful in locating sampled individuals (67% of the sample was located) and yielded the best response rate (56% of the sample completed a survey). In addition, study results indicate that directory assistance, criss-cross directories, and CD-ROM sources of phone numbers provide some limited additional information beyond the sample list provided by a Medicaid health insurance plan.