General Practitioners’ Participation in a Large, Multicountry Combined General Practitioner-Patient Survey: Recruitment Procedures and Participation Rate

Abstract

Background. The participation of general practitioners (GPs) is essential in research on the performance of primary care. This paper describes the implementation of a large, multicountry study in primary care that combines a survey among GPs and a linked survey among patients that visited their practice (the QUALICOPC study). The aim is to describe the recruitment procedure and explore differences between countries in the participation rate of the GPs. Methods. Descriptive analyses were used to document recruitment procedures and to assess hypotheses potentially explaining variation in participation rates between countries. Results. The survey was implemented in 31 European countries. GPs were mainly selected through random sampling. The actual implementation of the study differed between countries. The median participation rate was 30%. Both material (such as the payment system of GPs in a country) and immaterial influences (such as estimated survey pressure) are related to differences between countries. Conclusion. This study shows that the participation of GPs may indeed be influenced by the context of the country. The implementation of complex data collection is difficult to realize in a completely uniform way. Procedures have to be tuned to the context of the country.

Which patient and doctor behaviours make a medical consultation more effective from a patient point of view. Results from a European multicentre study in 31 countries

“…Ethical approval was acquired in accordance with the legal requirements in each country. Details about the study protocol and recruitment procedure have been published elsewhere [23,24], as well as the results of several parallel sub-studies [ [25], [26], [27], [28], [29]].…”

Differences in medical services in Nordic general practice: a comparative survey from the QUALICOPC study

“…Inclusion stopped when a satisfying number of responders were reached, or when no further recruitment was considered feasible. In Denmark and Norway, the GPs received an economic incentive for participation, and in Iceland participants were invited to a seminar [13]. In Sweden and Finland, no incentives for participation were offered.…”

GPPractices as a One‐Stop Shop: How Do Patients Perceive the Quality of Care? A Cross‐Sectional Study in Thirty‐Four Countries

“…More details about the study protocol have been published elsewhere (Schäfer et al. , ; Groenewegen, Greẞ, and Schäfer ).…”

“…The surveys were carried out anonymously. More details about the study protocol have been published elsewhere (Sch€ afer et al 2011b(Sch€ afer et al , 2013Groenewegen, Greẞ, and Sch€ afer 2016).…”