Abstract
The objective of this study was to understand the relationship between health survey and medical chart based information. The study population consisted of adult patients (17 years of age and older) attending the Bella Coola Medical Clinic who also completed a detailed Health and Quality of Life Survey. A total of 674 adults completed the Health and Quality of Life Survey. Demographically there was excellent agreement between self-report and clinic data for age, sex, height, weight and Aboriginal ancestry. For morbidity, there was excellent agreement between self-reported and clinically recorded diabetes. Good agreement was observed for diagnoses of cancer, heart problems, hypertension, arthritis and breathing problems. Poor agreement was observed for diagnoses of depression, back/neck problems, eye problems, walking problems, stroke, hearing problems and bone/joint problems. There was poor agreement between the number of self-reported and charted clinic visits. Excellent agreement was shown between self-reported height and weight and clinic height and weight. When BMI was calculated good agreement was achieved between self-report and chart data. It can be concluded that the relationship between chart review and self-report health information observed in this rural population is similar to findings from other populations. Researchers who use self report data on co-morbidity and obesity measures should be aware of possible error in their estimates and how these errors could affect their findings.
Voaklander, D.C., Thommasen, H.V., & Michalos, A.C.: 2006. The relationship between health survey and medical chart review results in a rural population. Social Indicators Research, 77, pp. 287–305. © Springer 2006.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to express thanks to the staff at the Bella Coola Medical Clinic for their assistance in distributing and collecting quality of life surveys. Thanks to Andy Bottomley for assistance with inputting survey data into electronic spreadsheets. We wish to thank the British Columbia Rural and Remote Research Institute for their financial support of this proposal. Dr. Thommasen would like to acknowledge the Community-Based-Clinical-Investigator Program for financial support.
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Voaklander, D.C., Thommasen, H.V., Michalos, A.C. (2017). The Relationship Between Health Survey and Medical Chart Review Results in a Rural Population. In: Connecting the Quality of Life Theory to Health, Well-being and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51161-0_7
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