The use of death certificates for this purpose is debated because of bias, inaccurate completion and incorrect ante mortem diagnoses.
Moreover, any bias in completion and return of PROMs cannot be assessed, as no details were available regarding the number of questionnaires sent out or returned.
However, we could not assess whether there was any bias in completion and return of PROMs, as no details were available regarding the number of questionnaires sent out or returned.
The TCI-R was administered by clinical psychologists to the patients to avoid comprehension problems or attention bias during completion of the questionnaire and was self-administered for the control group.
These errors were likely to derive from the complexity of the features and the requirement to finish the case and move on, resulting in "inattention error" or the associated bias "premature completion of task" (Table 3).
It is conducted in several steps that include for example the identification of internal and external biases, the completion of checklists for each source study, the discussion of each checklist by differing expert groups and the bias elicitation.
Although evaluation of service quality is based on national standards and protocols, varying perceptions of quality among supervisors may have biased the completion of the checklist.
Careful attention was paid to question phrasing in order to create a clear and complete, yet concise, instrument that would achieve high response rates and be free of errors and biases during completion and processing.
Feasibility and acceptability were assessed in terms of: i) patient consent rates and consent bias; ii) survey completion rates; iii) time taken to complete the questionnaire; iv) the proportion of patients needing assistance to complete the questionnaire; and v) patient feedback on the survey.
On the other hand, it is desirable to consider both incomplete and executed deals, to ensure that there is no completion bias.
