Use of the hospital postpartum period for population-based research

A survey method was developed to conduct population-based research on behaviour in pregnancy by contacting women during the postpartum period in hospital. 85.8% of the eligible women completed the questionnaire in hospital, and follow-up measures increased the response rate to the full questionnaire to 90.8%. A shorter version of the questionnaire was completed by another 3.7% of the women for an overall response rate of 94.5%. The test-retest reliability of the questionnaire was high. This method was very acceptable to women. Non-response was due mainly to women who were missed or to lost questionnaires rather than refusal. It is important to have a high response rate on similar surveys since responders did differ from non-responders on important characteristics. This method should prove useful to other health care planners.