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The effect of different sampling and recall periods in the CAHPS Clinician & Group (CG‐CAHPS) survey
Author(s) -
Hargraves J. Lee,
Cosenza Carol,
Elliott Marc N.,
Cleary Paul D.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
health services research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.706
H-Index - 121
eISSN - 1475-6773
pISSN - 0017-9124
DOI - 10.1111/1475-6773.13173
Subject(s) - medicine , respondent , recall , demography , patient satisfaction , sampling (signal processing) , test (biology) , surgery , psychology , filter (signal processing) , paleontology , sociology , political science , computer science , computer vision , law , cognitive psychology , biology
Objective To examine the effect of changing the sampling and reference periods for the CAHPS ® Clinician & Group Survey from 12 to 6 months. Data Sources/Study Setting Adult patients with a visit in the last 12 months to New England community health centers. Study Design We randomly assigned patients to receive a survey with either a 12‐ or 6‐month recall period. Data Collection/Extraction Methods Questionnaires were mailed to patients, with a second questionnaire mailed to nonrespondents, followed by six attempts to complete a telephone interview. Principal Findings If the sampling criterion was a visit in the last 6 months, 9 percent of those with a visit in the last 12 months would not have been surveyed. A total of 1837 patients completed 6‐month surveys (44.9 percent response rate); 588 completed 12‐month surveys (46.0 percent response rate). Shortening the reference from 12 to 6 months reduced the proportion of respondents reporting a blood test, X‐ray, or other tests. Adjusting for respondent characteristics, the most positive response was selected more often on the 6‐month survey for 12 out of 13 questions, and three of these differences were statistically significant ( P < 0.05). Conclusions Surveys using a 6‐month recall period may yield slightly higher scores than surveys with a 12‐month recall period.