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Background. Visiting a medical provider less frequently than clinical circumstances would suggest is appropriate has been reported to be associated with worse clinical outcomes for patients living with HIV infection. Patients with less frequent attendance to HIV care also may be systematically underrepresented in research or surveillance studies that enroll patients sequentially over a specified enrollment period - for example several months. For both reasons, understanding factors associated with time to care visit is important. Methods. We used data from the Adult and Adolescent Spectrum of HIV Disease (ASD) project, a multi-site clinical outcomes surveillance system that enrolled and followed patients in care for HIV prospectively from 1990 to 2004. For this analysis, we used data from all patients observed in ASD at least one time before 1 January 2003, and who had at least one HIV care visit in 2003. We documented time to first annual HIV care visit for each patient, and used Kaplan-Meier plots and proportional hazards regression to describe factors associated with longer time to care visit. Results. A total of 12,135 patients had ≥1 care visit during 2003 and were included in the analysis. Of these, 81%, 88%, and 95% had their first visit within three, four, and six months, respectively. In multivariate analysis, having a delayed (later) care visit was associated with not ever having had an AIDS diagnosis, having an HIV RNA concentration ≥10,000 copies/mL, having a current CD4 count <100 cells/µL, having no health insurance, and not being currently prescribed antiretroviral therapy. Having a delayed care visit was not associated with race/ethnicity or age. Conclusions. Having a delayed first annual HIV care visit was associated with higher viremia, lower CD4 cell count, and lack of health insurance. Interventions to address these factors are likely to ameliorate some of the consequences of HIV. For studies enrolling patients in care for HIV over a finite time period, an enrollment period of four-six months should sufficiently reflect the patient population seen in a one-year period, including those attending care infrequently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report published by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) which reviews empirical information related to the opt-in online discussion panels used for data collection on public opinion. The Opt-In Online Panel Task Force established by the AAPOR executive council in September 2008 is mentioned. Methods used to recruit online panelists are reviewed. The author comments on the difficulties related to gathering data online in spite of the number of adults in the U.S. that do not use the Internet on a regular basis. Methods used to reduce bias in public opinion research are also discussed.

Real-time interpretation during a survey can expand the number of languages in which surveys are offered. There are questions, however, about the quality of the interpretation process given that the interview is typically not pretranslated. A detailed assessment of the quality of this approach is provided using behavior-coding of interviews conducted with respondents who otherwise would have been finalized as “language barrier nonrespondents.” Interviews were recorded and behavior-coded, quantifying for each question, (1) the accuracy of the interpretation of the question, (2) the accuracy of the interpreted response, (3) the degree of difficulty administering the question, (4) the number of times the question needed to be repeated, and (5) the number of times the interpreter and respondent engaged in dialogue that was not relayed to the interviewer. The approach produced favorable results, with less than a 4 percent error rate for interpretation of the questions and a 1.4 percent error rate in interpretation of survey responses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mail surveys are a staple of the survey industry; however, they are rarely used in surveys of the general population. The problem is twofold: (1) lack of a complete sampling frame of households and (2) difficulties with ensuring random selection of a respondent within the household. However. advances in electronic record keeping, such as the U.S. Postal Service Delivery Sequence File, now make it possible to sample from a frame of residential addresses. Unfortunately, less is known about the effectiveness of within-household selection techniques for household mail surveys. A six-state pilot study was conducted as part of the 2005 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System using the Delivery Sequence File to sample addresses for a mail survey. The pilot study tested three respondent selection methods: any adult, adult with the next birthday, and all adults. The next-birthday and all-adults methods yielded household-level response rates that were comparable to the any adult method, the method assumed to have the least respondent burden. At the respondent level, however, the response rate for the all-adults method was lower when we accounted for within-household non response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Valid and reliable public health data are becoming more difficult to obtain through random-digit dial (RDD) telephone surveys. As a result, researchers are evaluating different survey designs (i.c., sampling frame and survey mode combinations) as complements or alternatives to RDD. Traditionally, mail surveys of the general public have been limited due to a lack of a complete sampling frame of households. Recent advances in electronic record keeping, however, have allowed researchers to develop a sample from a frame of addresses (e.g., the U.S. Postal Service Delivery Sequence File, which appears to provide coverage which rivals or possibly exceeds that obtained through RDD sampling methods). To test the use of this frame for surveying adults aged 18 years and older across a wide geographic area, a pilot study was conducted as part of the 2005 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System /BRFSS). The pilot compared use of a traditional, RDD telephone survey methodology to an approach using a mail version of the questionnaire completed by a random sample of households drawn from an address-based frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noncoverage rates in U.S. landline-based telephone samples due to cell phone only households (i.e., households with no landline but accessible by cell phone) and the corresponding potential for bias in estimates from surveys that sample only from landline frames are growing issues. Building on some of the few published studies that focus on this problem, a study was conducted in three states (Georgia, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania) as part of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), the world's largest ongoing public health telephone survey, to evaluate the effectiveness of conducting the BRFSS interview with a sample drawn from dedicated cell phone telephone exchanges and mixed-use (landline and cell phone) exchanges. Approximately 600 interviews were conducted in each of two groups: cell phone only adults (n = 572) and adults with both a landline and a cell phone (n = 592). Making comparisons with data from the ongoing, landline-based BRFSS survey, we report on response rates, demographic characteristics of respondents, key survey estimates of health conditions and risk behaviors, and survey costs. The methods used in this study have wide application for other U.S. telephone surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Use of random-digit dialing (RDD) for conducting health surveys is increasingly problematic because of declining participation rates and eroding frame coverage. Alternative survey modes and sampling frames may improve response rates and increase the validity of survey estimates. In a 2005 pilot study conducted in six states as part of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the authors administered a mail survey to selected household members sampled from addresses in a US Postal Service database. The authors compared estimates based on data from the completed mail surveys (n = 3,010) with those from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System telephone surveys (n = 18,780). The mail survey data appeared reasonably complete, and estimates based on data from the two survey modes were largely equivalent. Differences found, such as differences in the estimated prevalences of binge drinking (mail = 20.3%, telephone = 13.1%) or behaviors linked to human immunodeficiency virus transmission (mail = 7.1%, telephone = 4.2%), were consistent with previous research showing that, for questions about sensitive behaviors, self-administered surveys generally produce higher estimates than interviewer-administered surveys. The mail survey also provided access to cell-phone-only households and households without telephones, which cannot be reached by means of standard RDD surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focuses on the views of the American Statistical Association (ASA) Technical Panel on the Census Undercount concerning Census Bureau procedures and plans in the fall of 1982 in the United States. Need for the panel to give technical advice on measurement and estimation problems; Proposals for handling undercount issue; Analytical methods for the Census counts.

Provides information on a study that described the population of HIV-infected adults receiving care in rural areas of the United States and compared HIV care received in rural and urban areas. Methodology of the study; Results and discussion on the study.

Examines reasons for coming to the United States, use of health care services and participation in government programs by Latino immigrants using data from 1996/1997 survey of undocumented Latino immigrants in four sites. Job reasons; Ambulatory health care use compared with that of all Latinos and all persons nationally; Rates of hospitalization; Percentage of undocumented Latinos having a U.S. citizen child.

Background: and Methods In order to elucidate the medical care of patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in the United States, we randomly sampled HIV-infected adults receiving medical care in the contiguous United States at a facility other than a military, prison, or emergency department facility during the first two months of 1996. We interviewed 76 percent of 4042 patients selected from among the patients receiving care from 145 providers in 28 metropolitan areas and 51 providers in 25 rural areas. Results: During the first two months of 1996, an estimated 231,400 HIV-infected adults (95 percent confidence interval, 162,800 to 300,000) received care. Fifty-nine percent had the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome according to the case definition of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 91 percent had CD4+ cell counts of less than 500 per cubic millimeter. Eleven percent were 50 years of age or older, 23 percent were women, 33 percent were black, and 49 percent were men who had had sex with men. Forty-six percent had incomes of less than $10,000 per year, 68 percent had public health insurance or no insurance, and 30 percent received care at teaching institutions. The estimated annual direct expenditures for the care of the patients seen during the first two months of 1996 were $5.1 billion; the expenditures for the estimated 335,000 HIV-infected adults seen at least as often as every six months were $6.7 billion, which is about $20,000 per patient per year. Conclusions: In this national survey we found that most HIV-infected adults who were receiving medical care had advanced disease. The patient population was disproportionately male, black, and poor. Many Americans with diagnosed or undiagnosed HIV infection are not receiving medical care at least as often as every six months. The total cost of medical care for HIV-infected Americans accounts for less than 1 percent of all direct personal health expenditures in the United States. (N Engl J Med 1998;339:1897-904.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Although reducing adverse events and medical errors has become a central focus of the U.S. health care system over the past two decades both within and outside the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) hospital systems, patients treated in psychiatric units of acute care general hospitals have been excluded from major research in this field., Methods: The study included a random sample of 40 psychiatric units from medical centers in the national VHA system. Standardized abstraction tools were used to assess the electronic health records from 8,005 hospitalizations. Medical record administrators screened the records for the presence of ten specific types of patient safety events, which, when present, were evaluated by physician reviewers to assess whether the event was the result of an error, whether it caused harm, and whether it was preventable., Results: Approximately one in five patients experienced a patient safety event. The most frequently occurring events were medication errors (which include delayed and missed doses) (17.2%), followed by adverse drug events (4.1%), falls (2.8%), and assault (1.0%). Most patient safety events (94.9%) resulted in little harm or no harm, and more than half (56.6%) of the events were deemed preventable., Conclusions: Although patient safety events in VHA psychiatric inpatient units were relatively common, a great majority of these events resulted in little or no patient harm. Nevertheless, many were preventable, and the study provides data with which to target future initiatives that may improve the safety of this vulnerable patient population.

Objectives: This report presents detailed information on the National Asthma Survey (NAS), a module of the State and Local Area Integrated Survey program conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics. NAS, sponsored by the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health, was designed to produce national prevalence estimates of adults and children with asthma; to describe the health, socioeconomic, behavioral, and environmental predictors that relate to controlling asthma better; and to characterize the content of care and limitations of persons with asthma. National prevalence estimates were constructed to be consistent with those produced from the CDC's National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), although prevalence estimates for subpopulations may or may not be consistent with NHIS., Methods: Two separate random-digit-dial telephone studies were fielded: a national study and a four-state study in Alabama, California, Illinois, and Texas. Children aged 0-17 years and adults aged 18 years and over were included in both studies. The screening procedure differed between the studies. Percentages can be generated for the four states combined or for each state separately. A substudy was conducted in the national study to examine the accuracy of proxy reports of asthma., Results: Data were collected from February 2003 to March 2004. A total of 955 detailed asthma interviews were completed in the national study and 5,741 in the four-state study. A data file has been released for each study that contains asthma, health, and demographic data, as well as sampling weights. The weighted overall response rates were 47.2% for the national sample and 48.5% for the four-state sample.

Unlabelled: The National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs revealed that 8.3% of children under 18 years of age were uninsured, a rate lower than the rate estimated by other national surveys. This report presents the results of an evaluation of the quality of this estimate, based on analyses of non-response, question design, interviewer and respondent effects, and the weighing and estimation process. National and State-level statistics on health insurance coverage for children with special health care needs (CSHCN) and for children without special needs are included in an appendix., Source of Data: The National Survey of CSHCN is a survey module of the State and Local Area Integrated Telephone Survey. This survey of parents and guardians collected health insurance coverage information for a national sample of 215, 162 children. Data were collected from October 2000 through April 2002., Results: Compared with other surveys, weighted data from the National Survey of CSHCN describe a population with a slightly larger proportion of Hispanic children and children from households with higher incomes. The National Survey of CSHCN was also the only survey to use a child-level design: A randomized experiment that varied the health insurance questions found that repeating the coverage questions for each child produced lower unisurance rates than household-level questions that first asked if anyone in the househol was insured., Conclusion: Question design differences explain much of the discrepancy between survey estimates of the uninsurance rate, but a definitive conclusion regarding the relative accuracy of the uninsurance rates is not possible.

Objectives: This report presents the development, plan, and operation of the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs (CSHCN), a module of the State and Local Area Integrated Telephone Survey, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This survey was designed to produce national and State-specific prevalence estimates of CSHCN, describe the types of services that they need and use, and assess aspects of the system of care for CSHCN. This study included two additional modules to provide health care coverage estimates for all children and to collect data on the reasons that low-income uninsured children lack health care coverage. Primary funding for this survey was provided by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration., Methods: A random-digit-dial sample of households with children under 18 years of age was selected from each of the 50 States and the District of Columbia. Depending on the health care needs of the children in each household, a detailed interview was conducted for one randomly selected child with special needs and a brief health insurance interview was conducted for one randomly selected child without special needs. The respondent was the parent or guardian who knew the most about the child's health and health care., Results: A total of 196,888 household screening interviews were completed from October 2000 to April 2002. This resulted in 38,866 completed special-needs interviews and 176,296 completed health insurance interviews for children without special needs. The weighted overall response rate for special-needs interviews was 61.0%.