Non-participation modestly increased with distance to the examination clinic among adults in Finnish health examination surveys

Abstract

Aims: Health examinaton surveys (HES) provide important informaton about populaton health and health related factors, but declining partcipaton rates threaten the representatveness of collected data. It is hard to conduct natonal HESs so that examinaton clinics would be near to every sampled individual. Thus, it is interestng to look into the possible associaton between the distance from home to the examinaton clinic and non-partcipaton, and whether there is a certain distance after which the partcipaton actvity decreases considerably. Methods: Data from two natonal HESs conducted in Finland in 2011 and 2012 were used and a logistc regression model was fitted to investgate how distance was related to non-partcipaton. Results: We found out that non-partcipaton modestly increased with distance to the examinaton clinic. An additonal analysis indicated that a possibility to have an examinaton at home may decrease the effect of distance to partcipaton. Conclusions: Long distances from home to the examinaton clinic are one reason for low partcipaton actvity. Possible bias caused by these differences in partcipaton could be decreased by providing a possibility for home examinaton.