Using PubMed to Generate Email Lists of Participants for Healthcare Survey Research: A Simple and Practical Approach

Survey research is one of the most essential domains of evaluation and measurement in healthcare and social sciences. Online surveys are considered the most economical of the three main data collection methods, followed by telephone interviewing, while face-to-face interviewing is the most expensive. Even though they have many advantages, online surveys have very low response rates. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate a practical and simply replicable approach for using PubMed to generate large email lists of potential participants for healthcare survey research. In addition to personalizing each email, researchers can use a range of strategies to improve the response rate, including sending reminders, adding the updated response rate to the reminders, and stating the average time it would take participants to complete the survey. Moreover, acknowledging participants, using financial and non-financial incentives and contacting participants through their affiliated organization, can significantly improve participants response rate.