In terms of gender the study contained 52% females, in line with the nominated sampling frame of 52.5% females.
Informants were selected initially through purposive sampling – we invited known pediatric practitioners and had gatekeepers at school boards suggest schools – followed by nominated sampling.
Critically ill adult patients were all identified for participation by clinical ICU staff on the Monday of the nominated sampling week, with blood sampling and data collection occurring throughout that week.
A peer-nominated sample was solicited from the survivors.
For each completed call in the survivor group, the cost, which included the $25/hour charged by the call center, was $38.46, compared to $41.66 for the listed sample and $62.50 for the peer-nominated sample.
Column five in Table 3, titled Survivor vs. Peer, shows the two-sided p-values for testing whether the marginal distribution of the variable in column 1 for survivors is the same as or different than that for the peer-nominated sample.
Table 2 shows the means, standard deviations, and Table 3 shows the p-values for the comparison between the survivor group versus the peer-nominated and listed sample groups, respectively.
The purpose of this investigation was to test two methods of recruiting a comparison group for 5-year oral and pharyngeal cancer survivors (peer-nominated and listed sample) with emphasis on feasibility and the quality of the match.
Regional or national populations could also be monitored in this fashion, with a sample of nominated friends being periodically surveyed instead of, or in addition to, a random sample of people (as is usually the norm).
Patients receiving the study antibiotics will be identified on the nominated week for pharmacokinetic sampling.
A probabilistic sensitivity analysis was also performed, re-sampling from nominated distributions of data inputs through 10,000 iterations.
