Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in the Study of Telehealth Adoption in Health Centers Using Data From the Uniform Data System

This case study describes how we used a government administrative data set to study telehealth adoption among federally funded health centers. As government administrative data often contain both quantitative and qualitative information, we demonstrate how to apply statistical and qualitative methods to analyze such a data set. We used probit regression to analyze the adoption rate and associated quantitative factors, and qualitative coding to examine reported barriers to implementation. Our case study provides students with a practical example of how a research design can be tailored to an analysis of an existing administrative data set that was not originally collected for our research purpose. We also discuss how to interpret results from such analyses, identify potential challenges imposed by this type of research design, and highlight the advantages of analyzing public administrative data to inform policy making.