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BMC Medical Research Methodology
Published in: BMC Medical Research Methodology 1/2011

Open Access 01-12-2011 | Research article

Effect of reminders on mitigating participation bias in a case-control study

Authors: Clarence C Tam, Craig D Higgins, Laura C Rodrigues

Published in: BMC Medical Research Methodology | Issue 1/2011

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Abstract

Background

Researchers commonly employ strategies to increase participation in health studies. These include use of incentives and intensive reminders. There is, however, little evidence regarding the quantitative effect that such strategies have on study results. We present an analysis of data from a case-control study of Campylobacter enteritis in England to assess the usefulness of a two-reminder strategy for control recruitment.

Methods

We compared sociodemographic characteristics of participants and non-participants, and calculated odds ratio estimates for a wide range of risk factors by mailing wave.

Results

Non-participants were more often male, younger and from more deprived areas. Among participants, early responders were more likely to be female, older and live in less deprived areas, but despite these differences, we found little evidence of a systematic bias in the results when using data from early reponders only.

Conclusions

We conclude that the main benefit of using reminders in our study was the gain in statistical power from a larger sample size.
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Metadata
Title
Effect of reminders on mitigating participation bias in a case-control study
Authors
Clarence C Tam
Craig D Higgins
Laura C Rodrigues
Publication date
01-12-2011
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
BMC Medical Research Methodology / Issue 1/2011
Electronic ISSN: 1471-2288
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-11-33

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