For non-English speaking women,the questionnaires were
administered by bilingual interviewers.Bilingual research assistants were employed to conduct interviews in English,Sylheti and
Bengali and the Trust's bilingual health advocates interviewed a small number of women in Somali and Urdu.For other languages
the interview was done via three-way interview over the phone
using a commercial interpreting service.The most common
language spoken by non-English speaking women was Sylheti,a dialect of Bengali,which is not a written language.The questionnaires were administered via a telephone interview and the researchers conducting the interview had a printed copy of the questionnaire with the participant's ID number.The free text was written in specific spaces on the questionnaire.Inter-rater variability was minimised by agreement between the researchers
carrying out the interviews about how to pose questions and
write answers.