BACKGROUND Data for health surveys are often collected using either mailed questionnaires, telephone interviews or a combination. Mode of data collection can affect the propensity to refuse to respond and result in different patterns of responses. The objective of this paper is to examine and quantify effects of mode of data collection in health surveys. METHODS A stratified sample of 4,000 a...

Postal surveys have been used for many years by researchers to obtain information about the attitudes, knowledge and self reported behaviour of general practitioners. It is widely believed that poor response rates undermine the validity of survey research, 2 but only a few studies have tackled the methodological problem of whether a low response rate matters. Non-responders to general practitio...

BACKGROUND Patient satisfaction surveys are increasingly used by hospitals. Many questionnaires are available, but little evidence exists to guide the choice of the most suitable instrument. OBJECTIVE To compare the acceptability and patient perceptions of 4 patient satisfaction questionnaires. RESEARCH DESIGN Randomized trial of 4 satisfaction questionnaires: Picker, Patient Judgment Syste...

BACKGROUND Of global concern is the decline in under five children mortality which has reversed in some countries in sub Saharan Africa (SSA) since the early 1990 s which could be due to disparities in access to preventive services including immunization. This paper is aimed at determining the trend in disparities in completion of immunization using Tanzania Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)...

OBJECTIVES To derive the best possible estimates of trends in age at first sex (AFS) among successive cohorts of Ugandan men and women based on all the data available from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and cohort studies in Masaka and Rakai districts. METHODS The datasets from the DHS, Masaka cohort and Rakai cohort were analysed separately. Survival analysis methods were used to e...

In Nigeria, decades of protracted military rule deepened poverty and created a situation in which many children are undernourished. According to the last National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS, 2003), 29% of Nigerian children under five years are considered underweight. Today Nigeria is among the ten countries in the world with the largest number of underweight children, with an estimated...

urvey research is an important form of scientific inquiry 1 that merits rigorous design and analysis. 2 The aim of a survey is to gather reliable and unbiased data from a representative sample of respondents. 3 Increasingly, investigators administer questionnaires to clinicians about their knowledge, attitudes and practice 2,4,5 to generate or refine research questions and to evaluate the impac...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Patient satisfaction is of paramount importance when delivering a patient-centered service. Our hospital has been a center for the use of radioiodine to treat thyrotoxicosis for several years, but we began carrying out patient satisfaction surveys and implementing changes after 2008. The aim of the project reported here was to assess patient satisfaction with our radioi...

BACKGROUND General Practitioners (GPs) respond poorly to postal surveys. Consequently there is potential for reduced data quality and bias in the findings. In general population surveys, response to postal questionnaires may be improved by reducing their length and offering incentives. The aim of this study was to investigate whether questionnaire length and/or the offer of an incentive improve...

background violence is the cause of death for 1.5 million people in a year. objectives our study aimed to estimate the incidence rate of self-reported interpersonal violence related physical injury (vrpi) and its associated factors in iran. patients and methods the sample included people ranged from 15 to 64 years old who were residing in iran. a total of 1525 clusters were selected from the wh...