Health Services Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Under the assumption that the order in which patients enter the consultation room is unrelated to the length of time spent with the clinician and the interviewer, selecting the next patient entering the consultation room tends to be the operationally most efficient unbiased sampling method for patient exit interviews. We show that this sampling method is operationally more efficient than alternative methods (systematic and simple random sampling) in most primary health care settings. This bias can be removed by selecting the next patient who enters, rather than exits, the consultation room. We demonstrate mathematically that this method yields a biased sample: patients who spend a longer time with the clinician are overrepresented. Our simulations show that in patient exit interviews it is most operationally efficient if the interviewer, after completing an interview, selects the next patient exiting the clinical consultation. Literature review, mathematical derivation, and Monte Carlo simulations.
(1) To evaluate the operational efficiency of various sampling methods for patient exit interviews (2) to discuss under what circumstances each method yields an unbiased sample and (3) to propose a new, operationally efficient, and unbiased sampling method. Geldsetzer, Pascal Fink, Günther Vaikath, Maria Bärnighausen, Till Sampling for Patient Exit Interviews: Assessment of Methods Using Mathematical Derivation and Computer Simulations.
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