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[External difficulties and their management in catamnestic studies (home visits)]
1Bereich Medizin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Insights
Tracing former child patients for follow-up studies presents challenges due to name and address changes. Persistent, time-consuming home visits are essential for successful participant recruitment and data collection in long-term research.
Area of Science:
- Medical research
- Pediatric follow-up studies
Context:
- Challenges in tracing individuals treated in childhood or in long-stay nurseries.
- Difficulty in locating adult patients and their relatives due to name and address changes.
Purpose:
- To describe the difficulties encountered when attempting to trace former child patients for follow-up.
- To highlight the necessity of persistent efforts in locating study participants.
Summary:
- The study details the significant challenges in tracing individuals for long-term follow-up, including those treated in childhood or early life care.
- It emphasizes the extensive time and effort required to locate participants and relatives who have changed personal details.
Impact:
- Home visits, despite being time-consuming, proved invaluable for successful participant tracing.
- This methodology enabled the satisfactory completion of the study's follow-up objectives.
Abstract:
It is reported on som difficulties arising an attempt to trace former children whom we wanted to follow-up. On the one hand there were individuals who had been treated in childhood in our hospital many years ago, on the other hand some individuals concerned had been cared in a long stay-nursery during their first years of life. Furthermore, we traced adult patients to follow-up them and also visited some of their relatives in their homes. It is described how much persistent and time-consuming efforts had to be made to trace the probands and their relatives, for they, frequently, had altered their names and their addresses. However, the visits to the individuals' homes were worth while. Only in this way we were enabled to satisfactorily carry out the tasks, we had set to ourselves.