A total of 105 nursing and technical personnel members were sampled.
One hundred and five nursing personnel members were sampled 4 times in random order after viewing an instruction paper: 1) nasal self-sample, 2) pharyngeal self-sample, 3) nasal investigator-sample, and 4) pharyngeal investigator-sample.
The views of non-AHWs (i.e. health service management, tobacco control personnel and other health staff) were sampled to gain further insight into the broader socio-ecological (e.g. interpersonal, organisational, community and policy level) features that could influence AHWs' smoking behaviours.
We examined data on 17,370 personnel who had been sampled for the first wave of data collection of the Iraq war cohort study.
Typical areas that would signal contamination such as door handles, laboratory benches, and hoods, in addition to exposed skin of technical personnel, were routinely sampled each day.
The invited Cohort was sampled from electronic personnel records representing approximately 11.3percentt of the 2.2 million men and women in service as of October 1, 2000.
In order to increase the response rate, trained research personnel were sent to the sampled clinic with a 4-page self-administered structured questionnaire covering the issues of practice history, reporting behaviors, attitude to reporting, and knowledge about reportable and not reportable diseases (The 10-item list of infectious diseases can be found in table three).
Of the 252 personnel initially identified and sampled; 15 personnel were subsequently excluded as they had completed their conscript service and left the military before completion of the study.
When suspected cases were detected, laboratory personnel were called to collect samples, conduct post-mortem examinations and HPAI rapid tests.
