Population ideals and sample realities—why we still need access to comprehensive information about populations
- School of Health Sciences and Social Care, Brunel University, Middlesex, UK
- Correspondence to: Dr G Barrett School of Health Sciences and Social Care, Brunel University, Osterley Campus, Borough Road, Middlesex TW7 5DU, UK; geraldine.barrettbrunel.ac.uk
Public health population research will be rendered impossible if individual consent for all secondary uses of health data becomes the norm.
Much epidemiological and health services research relies on surveys and Jousilahti et al’s paper1 is a timely reminder to us about the biases caused by participants’ non-response. Although we all know that non-response is a socially patterned phenomenon, this knowledge is so familiar that it is easy to become complacent—how many of us have ticked the mental boxes of “>70%” and “information about response biases” as markers of a good quality survey when reading or reviewing a paper? Jousilahti et al’s paper is valuable in that it provides data …
