Maximising follow-up participation rates in a large scale 45 and Up Study in Australia
Date
2016-04-14
Authors
Bauman, Adrian
Phongsavan, Philayrath
Cowle, Alison
Banks, Emily
Jorm, Louisa
Rogers, Kris
Jalaludin, Bin
Grunseit, Anne
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BioMed Central
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
The issue of poor response rates to population surveys has existed for some decades, but few studies have explored methods to improve the response rate in follow-up population cohort studies.
METHODS:
A sample of 100,000 adults from the 45 and Up Study, a large population cohort in Australia, were followed up 3.5 years after the baseline cohort was assembled. A pilot mail-out of 5000 surveys produced a response rate of only 41.7 %. This study tested methods of enhancing response rate, with three groups of 1000 each allocated to (1) receiving an advance notice postcard followed by a questionnaire, (2) receiving a questionnaire and then follow-up reminder letter, and (3) both these strategies.
RESULTS:
The enhanced strategies all produced an improved response rate compared to the pilot, with a resulting mean response rate of 53.7 %. Highest response was found when both the postcard and questionnaire reminder were used (56.4 %) but this was only significantly higher when compared to postcard alone (50.5 %) but not reminder alone (54.1 %). The combined approach was used for recruitment among the remaining 92,000 participants, with a resultant further increased response rate of 61.6 %.
CONCLUSIONS:
Survey prompting with a postcard and a reminder follow-up questionnaire, applied separately or combined can enhance follow-up rates in large scale survey-based epidemiological studies.
Description
Keywords
Epidemiological studies, Follow-up, Response rates, Recruitment strategies
Citation
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Source
Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
Type
Journal article
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Open Access
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