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

Abstract

Theparticipationofgeneralpractitioners(GPs)isessentialinresearchontheperformanceofprimarycare.Thispaper describestheimplementationofalarge,multicountrystudyinprimarycarethatcombinesasurveyamongGPsandalinkedsurvey amongpatientsthatvisitedtheirpractice(theQUALICOPCstudy).Theaimistodescribetherecruitmentprocedureandexplore differencesbetweencountriesintheparticipationrateoftheGPs.Methods.Descriptiveanalyseswereusedtodocumentrecruitment proceduresandtoassesshypothesespotentiallyexplainingvariationinparticipationratesbetweencountries.Results.Thesurvey was implemented in 31 European countries. GPs were mainly selected through random sampling. The actual implementation of thestudydifferedbetweencountries.Themedianparticipationratewas30%.Bothmaterial(suchasthepaymentsystemofGPsin acountry)andimmaterialinfluences(suchasestimatedsurveypressure)arerelatedtodifferencesbetweencountries.Conclusion. This study shows that the participation of GPs may indeed be influenced by the context of the country. The implementation of complexdatacollectionisdifficulttorealizeinacompletelyuniformway.Procedureshavetobetunedtothecontextofthecountry.