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Recruitment, data collection, participation rate, and representativeness of the international cross-sectional PRICOV-19 study across 38 countries.

Tatsioni, A., Groenewegen, P., Poel, E. Van, Vafeidou, K., Assenova, R., Hoffmann, K., Schaubroeck, E., Stark, S., Tkachenko, V., Willems, S. Recruitment, data collection, participation rate, and representativeness of the international cross-sectional PRICOV-19 study across 38 countries. BMC Primary Care: 2024, 24(Suppl. 1), p. Art. nr. 290.
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Background
Recruitment for surveys has been a great challenge, especially in general practice.

Methods
Here, we reported recruitment strategies, data collection, participation rates (PR) and representativeness of the PRICOV-19 study, an international comparative, cross-sectional, online survey among general practices (GP practices) in 37 European countries and Israel.

Results
Nine (24%) countries reported a published invitation; 19 (50%) had direct contact with all GPs/GP practices; 19 (50%) contacted a sample of GPs /GP practices; and 7 (18%) used another invitation strategy. The median participation rate was 22% (IQR = 10%, 28%). Multiple invitation strategies (P-value 0.93) and multiple strategies to increase PR (P-value 0.64) were not correlated with the PR. GP practices in (semi-) rural areas, GP practices serving more than 10,000 patients, and group practices were over-represented (P-value < 0.001). There was no significant correlation between the PR and strength of the primary care (PC) system [Spearman's r 0.13, 95% CI (-0.24, 0.46); P-value 0.49]; the COVID-19 morbidity [Spearman's r 0.19, 95% CI (-0.14, 0.49); P-value 0.24], or COVID-19 mortality [Spearman's r 0.19, 95% CI (-0.02, 0.58); P-value 0.06] during the three months before country-specific study commencement.

Conclusion
Our main contribution here was to describe the survey recruitment and representativeness of PRICOV-19, an important and novel study.