Table 4.

Focus group themes - exploring text messaging as a survey tool in a low income community

Category	Theme	Representative quote
General experience with text survey	Positive	“I would read a text [survey] faster than if somebody sent me a survey through the mail”.
		“That”s all people do is text anyway!”
		“It is plain and simple. It isn’t like you are sending off paragraphs at a time.”
	Negative	“But I would forget. You know, once you get to your destination you forget [to answer the text]”.
Technical issues	Phone service provider issues	“Like sometimes in my house, in our neighborhood the reception is bad so if a text comes through and I go outside I will respond to the text and like the next day I go and see that it was saved in ‘address’ like, you didn’t send”.
Timing and frequency	Number of texts	“Two [a day] is enough for me”.
		“Send some more! Send five a day!”
	Timing	“I didn’t like the ones that came after ten because I turn in like at eight. So the ones I got at ten o’clock you might have got a weird answer”.
		“Sundays are not good because of church”.
Texts compared to other modes	Preferred over paper, phone, face-to-face, internet surveys	“I want to do more text surveys”.
		“I like text surveys better than those other kinds [of surveys]”.
		“It takes a shorter time if I text than just writing it on a sheet of paper”.
		“It’s a lot quicker than taking a survey on the internet. I will tell you that!”
Implementation for text surveys	Types of survey questions	“Text would not be good for sensitive stuff”.
		“If I thought it was going to be that personal I would say one on one [interviewing] is better”.
	Incentives	“I think you would have to put it out there in the beginning that it is a quarter, but I would do it [answer the text survey]”.
		“I would do it for nothing if it’s going to help people in the long run with their insurance because I don’t have none [insurance]”.