Document Type
Article
Original Publication Date
2016
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Journal of Medical Internet Research
Volume
18
Issue
11
DOI of Original Publication
10.2196/jmir.6342
Date of Submission
February 2017
Abstract
Background: Electronic surveys are convenient, cost effective, and increasingly popular tools for collecting information. While the online platform allows researchers to recruit and enroll more participants, there is an increased risk of participant dropout in Web-based research. Often, these dropout trends are simply reported, adjusted for, or ignored altogether.
Objective: To propose a conceptual framework that analyzes respondent attrition and demonstrates the utility of these methods with existing survey data.
Methods: First, we suggest visualization of attrition trends using bar charts and survival curves. Next, we propose a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) to detect or confirm significant attrition points. Finally, we suggest applications of existing statistical methods to investigate the effect of internal survey characteristics and patient characteristics on dropout. In order to apply this framework, we conducted a case study; a seventeen-item Informed Decision-Making (IDM) module addressing how and why patients make decisions about cancer screening.
Results: Using the framework, we were able to find significant attrition points at Questions 4, 6, 7, and 9, and were also able to identify participant responses and characteristics associated with dropout at these points and overall.
Conclusions: When these methods were applied to survey data, significant attrition trends were revealed, both visually and empirically, that can inspire researchers to investigate the factors associated with survey dropout, address whether survey completion is associated with health outcomes, and compare attrition patterns between groups. The framework can be used to extract information beyond simple responses, can be useful during survey development, and can help determine the external validity of survey results.
Rights
©Camille J Hochheimer, Roy T Sabo, Alex H Krist, Teresa Day, John Cyrus, Steven H Woolf. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 22.11.2016. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
Is Part Of
VCU Biostatistics Publications
Comments
Originally published at http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.6342.
Funded in part by the VCU Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund.