Factors Associated With Response Rates in a National Survey of Primary Care Physicians

Abstract

This article addresses the results and implications of offering a national sample of primary care physicians an option to complete a questionnaire by mail or phone. An overall cooperation rate of 62.7% was achieved; 55% of the interviews were completed via telephone. Noticeable differences in rate of cooperation and mode preference were observed across the four physician specialties surveyed. The importance of a lengthy field period, due to differences between early and late responders on variables important to the study, is also demonstrated. chieving high response rates in surveys of physicians is an ongoing A challenge in evaluation research. Physicians have varying schedules, are under time constraints, are difficult to locate, and are generally perceived as being resistant to surveys. These factors are usually invoked as explanations for low response rates in surveys of physicians (Cartwright 1978;Berk 1985;Sobal and Ferentz 1989).

A survey assessing knowledge and perception of prescribers towards generic medicines in Hospital Seberang Jaya

“…12,13 Overall, it is seen that the physicians were more inclined towards prescribing branded medicines. Nearly 68.0% disclosed that they always or most of the time prescribed branded medicines.…”

A survey exploring knowledge and perceptions of general practitioners towards the use of generic medicines in the northern state of Malaysia

“…It is generally more challenging to yield a high response rates from surveys of physicians than with general population surveys [15]. Parson et al demonstrated that subsequent contact attempts of up to 11 times in a mail surveys of physicians yielded less than 20% of response compared to the first mailing which accounts for up to 40% of response [15].…”

“…It is generally more challenging to yield a high response rates from surveys of physicians than with general population surveys [15]. Parson et al demonstrated that subsequent contact attempts of up to 11 times in a mail surveys of physicians yielded less than 20% of response compared to the first mailing which accounts for up to 40% of response [15]. In a review of the literature on survey methodology specific to physician surveys, a reduction in the number of follow up mailings was proposed in place of other techniques that significantly increase response rate such as monetary incentives, inclusion of replacement questionnaire and paid return postage [16].…”

Print format and sender recognition were related to survey completion rate

“…Physicians from various specialties differ in their likelihood of responding to surveys, although the factors underlying these group differences are not well understood [5,19,29,40]. Surgeons, for example, seem to be less likely to respond to surveys than physicians from other disciplines [31,41].…”

“…Such relatively expensive procedures include prepaid monetary incentives [7][8][9][10][11][12][13], certified mail or courier mailouts [13][14][15][16], and telephone contact from peers or investigators [17][18][19][20]. In contrast, relatively little is known about how inexpensive variations in survey presentation affect response for this population [21].…”