During the pandemic, conducting telephone-based interviews allowed data to be collected for the routine longitudinal survey safely without direct respondent contact and without interruption.

Establishing trust, encouraging social norms, describing the reciprocal benefits of survey participation, and leveraging social networks facilitated survey participation and data collection.

Despite using strategies to encourage survey responses, the response rate for telephone-based data collection was lower than in-person data collection.

Before conducting a telephone-based interview, researchers should conduct a feasibility study to explore the respondents’ characteristics, including the cost impact on respondents, respondents’ telephone ownership, and capabilities to interact by telephone (limited for the older age or respondents with disabilities), as well as connection strength and interview length.

A longitudinal study in Indonesia should collect respondent contact numbers and update them frequently to ensure they are still active.

The Sleman Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) is a longitudinal survey held routinely since 2014 to collect demographic, social, and health changes in Sleman Regency, Special Region of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia, we needed to adjust our method of conducting data collection from in-person to telephone interviews. We describe the Sleman HDSS data collection strategy used and the opportunities it presented. First, the Sleman HDSS team completed a feasibility study and adjusted the standard operational procedures to conduct telephone interviews. Then, the Sleman HDSS team collected data via a telephone interview in September–October 2020. Ten interviewers were equipped with an e-HDSS data collection application installed on an Android-based tablet to collect data. The sample targeted was 5,064 households. The telephone-based data collection successfully interviewed 1,674 households (33% response rate) in 17 subdistricts. We changed the data collection strategy so that the Sleman HDSS could still be conducted and we could get the latest data from the population. Compared to in-person interviewing, data collection via telephone was sufficiently practical. The telephone interview was a safe and viable data collection method. To increase the response rate, telephone number activation could be checked, ways of building rapport could be improved, and engagement could be improved by using social capital.

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