Variations in general practitioners' response to postal questionnaires.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to A Cartwright.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
The effects of a number of controllable factors on the response rate of mothers to a postal questionnaire were assessed by a series of experiments. In one a factorial design was used to look at seven factors with a random sample of 1600 mothers. The main findings were that the responses to questionnaires of 8, 16 or 24 pages were similar, but that rather more mothers replied when the questionnaires contained only factual questions than when they covered both facts and attitudes. Another experiment, based on a similar sample, compared the response rates when the questionnaires were sent out by a government organization or by the Institute for Social Studies in Medical Care, and found no difference. The final experiment looked at the effect of precoding the answers or asking respondents to tick boxes beside their replies and again found no difference in response rates. The overall response rate was 79 per cent, but this varied between 66 and 87 per cent in the ten randomly selected study areas--a much greater variation than that found with any of the experimental factors.
There may be bugs, there may be viruses, but computers are here to stay. Access to computers may vary greatly from 'seen one once' to daily usage. However, with an increasing dependence on electronic records, even the most remote therapist will ultimately be faced with computerization. To make this process as painless as possible some commonality in approach is logical. A common vocabulary, for instance, would ensure that dysphasia in Cape Town is the same as dysphasia in Dundee. This is great in theory but is Clinical Terms Version 3 (Read Codes) (CTV3) sufficient to encode records in clinical practice? It is to this end that the Speech and Language Therapy Department at Burton Hospital took part in a multidisciplinary project with the NHS Centre for Coding and Classification (NHS CCC). (NHS CCC became the NHS Information Authority, Coding and Classification on 1 April 1999.) Their CTV3 offers a standardized clinical terminology. An audit of patient case-notes found that 78% of the terms used by therapists were available in CTV3. Although there are many issues raised concerning electronic patient records, CTV3 presented as a potential vocabulary for recording patient information in this acute setting.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
In Britain, as in the United States over the last decade, there has been a considerable decline in the birthrate, in average family size and in the number of children wanted, at the same time that use of the most effective forms of contraception--the pill, the IUD and contraceptive sterilization--and use of abortion have become more and more widespread.