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Influences on participation rate in a national Norwegian child development screening questionnaire study
Author(s) -
Janson H
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
acta pædiatrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.772
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1651-2227
pISSN - 0803-5253
DOI - 10.1111/j.1651-2227.2003.tb00476.x
Subject(s) - medicine , norwegian , normative , bivariate analysis , multivariate analysis , demography , developmental psychology , pediatrics , psychology , statistics , philosophy , linguistics , mathematics , epistemology , sociology
Aim : To describe the influence of demographic variables on participation rate in a child development screening questionnaire study, and to discuss the implications for data analysis and for the design of future similar studies. Methods : Appropriate Ages and Stages Questionnaires were mailed to 2392 mothers of children aged 4–60 mo. The bivariate and multivariate influence of demographic variables on responding was investigated. Results : The response rate decreased roughly linearly with the age of the child (ranging from 76% at 8 mo to 32% at 60 mo). Mother's educational level, civil status and (marginally) child's gender also contributed independently to the prediction of response. Conclusion : Participation rate may be interpreted in terms of interest/saliency and time demands, if a mother's interest in her baby's normative development is assumed to be great, though decreasing as the child grows. Weighting for demographic variables seems to be a viable procedure in the present project; future studies may consider measures to increase the immediacy of questionnaire completion for mothers of children aged 3 y and older.