Sweden has a long history of conducting questionnaire-based Public Health Surveys (PHS) to monitor health determinants. As Sweden has become a multi-ethnic society a linguistically adapted instrument to collect data was first used in Stockholm PHS 2006 to overcome the barrier of lack of Swedish language proficiency, but more importantly to overcome the psychological barrier of being excluded. The questionnaire was translated into the six most spoken languages among Swedish immigrants, namely Arabic, English, Farsi, Finnish, Spanish, and Turkish. In spite of a decrease in participation rate (—2.9%, p < 0.0001) among native Swedes in PHS 2006 compared with PHS 2002, there was a substantial increase in participation rate among immigrants in PHS 2006 who received a translated questionnaire or were interviewed in their mother tongue. The increase in response rate varied from 2.1% among Finnish-speaking immigrants up to 12.4% among Turkish-speaking immigrants and was significant for Arabic-speaking (p < 0.0001), Farsi-speaking (p = 0.003), Spanish-speaking (p < 0.0001) and Turkish-speaking (p < 0.0001) immigrants. Various attempts to increase participation rate will be of importance to policy makers involved in the integration of the immigrant population, to healthcare professionals, and obviously to the public. © 2010, the Nordic Societies of Public Health. All rights reserved.

Response Rate immigrants Survey Questionnaire Sweden

information processing Communication Barriers psychological aspect human communication disorder middle aged Aged Health Surveys ethnology Young Adult Sweden Humans Adolescent Emigrants and Immigrants Aged, 80 and over questionnaire Article postal mail Questionnaires adult Postal Service migration Data Collection public health health survey