Feedback for participants in a health survey: feasible and useful.
The use of quantitative methods has often limited the communication between researchers and research participants to being one-sided. Use of feedback in survey-oriented research is one possibility for creating a more communicative relationship. After doing a postal survey of 2000 Finnish 45 to 64-year-old women about their climacterium we produced a feedback leaflet about the main results of the study and about climacterium in general and sent it to all respondents (n = 1713). Later a postal questionnaire concerning the feedback leaflet was sent to a consecutive sample of every eighth (n = 200) woman, of whom 153 (76%) responded. Most of the women gave neutral or positive responses to the content of the leaflet. There was more interest in the feedback among the younger and pre-menopausal groups than among the older or postmenopausal women. Some women wanted more information about climacterium-related issues than was possible to give in the space of eight pages. According to this experiment, feedback offers fresh view-points and valuable critique for researchers as a result of being more in contact with respondents.
Kangas
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Kangas is affiliated with the University of Helsinki, Department of Sociology, Finland.
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Hemminki
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D003142:Communication; D005246:Feedback; D005260:Female; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged