Data quality assurance: an analysis of patient non-response

Patient satisfaction is paramount to maintaining high clinical quality assurance. This study seeks to compare response rates, response bias, and the completeness of data between paper and electronic collection modes of a chiropractic patient satisfaction survey.

A convenience sample of 206 patients presenting to a chiropractic college clinic were surveyed concerning satisfaction with their chiropractic care. Paper (in-clinic and postal) and electronic modes of survey administration were compared for response rates and non-response bias.

The online data collection mode resulted in fewer non-responses and a higher response rate, and did not evince response bias when compared to paper modes. The postal paper mode predicted non-response rates over the in-clinic paper and online modalities and exhibited a gender bias.

This current study was a single clinic study; future studies should consider multi-clinic data collections. Busy clinic operations and available staff resources restricted the ability to conduct a random sampling of patients or to invite all eligible patients, therefore limiting the generalizability of collected survey data.

Results of this study will provide data to aid development of survey protocols that efficiently, account for available human resources, and are convenient for patients while allowing for the most complete and accurate data collection possible in an educational clinic setting.

Understanding patient responses across survey modes is critical for the cultivation of quality business intelligence within college teaching clinic settings. This study bridges measurement evidence from three popular data collection modalities and offers support for higher levels of quality for web-based data collection.