Original articlePredictors of Nonresponse in a Questionnaire-Based Outcome Study of Vocational Rehabilitation Patients
Section snippets
Study Population
The study sample consisted of 990 patients hospitalized between November 15, 2003, and December 31, 2005, after orthopedic trauma, eligible for the OUTCOME study. This is a prospective cohort study of patients enrolled in 2 Swiss rehabilitation clinics after traumatic injury. Clinical and sociodemographic data at hospitalization (baseline) were available for all the 990 eligible patients. A semiconducted interview was organized for every admitted patient during the first 3 days of admission to
Results
Nine hundred ninety patients were eligible for the OUTCOME study and were therefore included in the present investigation. Their mean age ± SD was 42±10.7 years (range, 17–64y). Other characteristics are shown in table 2. The more frequent categories in each of the dichotomous predictors were as follows: men (87%), married or domestic partner (66%), compulsory school (52%), native language other than French or German (54%), complex biopsychosocial case (52%), lack of psychiatric comorbidity
Discussion
Our results suggest that biopsychosocial complexity, language, educational status, and, to a lesser extent, marital status and age may influence nonresponse in a questionnaire-based investigation of vocational rehabilitation study. Sex, psychiatric comorbidity, alcoholism, and somatic comorbidity had no significant effect in this investigation. The effects of biopsychosocial complexity, language, and education were stronger at hospitalization but were still important over 1 year after their
Conclusions
The factors we found to be predictive of nonresponse, particularly low educational level, foreign native language, and high biopsychosocial complexity, are also known to influence treatment outcome and vocational rehabilitation.25, 27, 28, 49, 50 In order to reduce selection bias and limit the risk of misinterpreting results of questionnaire-based studies, an extra effort should be made to improve the likelihood of response by people who are biopsychosocially complex, speak foreign languages,
Acknowledgments
We thank Viviane Dufour, Antoinette Crettenand, and Aaron Russell, PhD, for all the work related to the preparation of the OUTCOME questionnaires, data collection, and data entry. Peter Erhard, PhD, Hanspeter Gmünder, MD, and Nikola Seichert, PhD, collaborated in the design of the OUTCOME project.
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Supported by Schweizerische Unfallversicherungsanstalt (SUVA) (grant no. 100204).
A commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has conferred or will confer a financial benefit on 1 or more of the authors. The Clinique romande de réadaptation belongs to SUVA, the Swiss national accident insurance.