1. Non-participation modestly increased with distance to the examination clinic among adults in Finnish health examination surveys
- Author
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Tommi Härkänen, Satu Männistö, Jaakko Reinikainen, Perttu Saarsalmi, Juha Karvanen, Hanna Tolonen, and Pekka Jousilahti
- Subjects
Gerontology ,Adult ,Male ,väestö ,Population health ,Logistic regression ,Representativeness heuristic ,Health Services Accessibility ,03 medical and health sciences ,Health examination ,0302 clinical medicine ,Non participation ,Bias ,etäisyys ,Medicine ,Humans ,030212 general & internal medicine ,distance ,Finland ,Aged ,health examination survey ,osallistuminen ,ta112 ,business.industry ,030503 health policy & services ,Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health ,non-participation ,General Medicine ,ta3142 ,Middle Aged ,terveystutkimus ,Health Care Surveys ,Female ,tutkimus ,Patient Participation ,0305 other medical science ,business ,terveystarkastukset ,terveys ,survey-tutkimus - Abstract
Aims: Health examination surveys (HES) provide important information about population health and health-related factors, but declining participation rates threaten the representativeness of collected data. It is hard to conduct national HESs at examination clinics near to every sampled individual. Thus, it is interesting to look into the possible association between the distance from home to the examination clinic and non-participation, and whether there is a certain distance after which the participation activity decreases considerably. Methods: Data from two national HESs conducted in Finland in 2011 and 2012 were used and a logistic regression model was fitted to investigate how distance was related to non-participation. Results: We found out that non-participation modestly increased with distance to the examination clinic. An additional analysis indicated that the option of having an examination at home may decrease the effect of distance to participation. Conclusions: Long distances from home to the examination clinic are one reason for low participation activity. Possible bias caused by these differences in participation could be decreased by providing the option of a home examination.
- Published
- 2018