Third: because of our strict inclusion and exclusion criteria and because all patients were recruited from a university hospital, our sample representativeness might have been reduced.
To check our sample representativeness, with respect to geographical distribution, we compared it to the number of Brazilian IT professionals [68].
Although we believe that the studies used for this research are of high quality, issues regarding our sample representativeness are apparent.
This may impact on our sample's representativeness, although our contacts covered most Australian cities and a wide range of research institutes.
An important consideration in our analysis is the representativeness of our sample.
Nonetheless, the secular trends found in the FHS population synchronize with those observed in nationally representative samples, and the comparability of our data on nutrient stability provide evidence of our population's representativeness.
We also considered Regional Protected Areas in our analysis of representativeness.
Although designed to achieve a minimum level of representativeness, our participant recruitment was non-random.
These figures support the validity of our methods and representativeness of the GPs and patients included in the data set.
For better representativeness, our sampling was stratified by number of years of school attended among undergraduate medical students.
