The diversity of the care providers' sample was ensured for age (<45 years, n = 11), gender (8 women), specialty (11 GPs, 6 rheumatologists, 4 orthopedic surgeons, 8 [4 GPs] delivering alternative medicine), and place of practice (23 urural6 rural).
Providers sampled included pediatricians, internists, visiting nurse organizations, providers in federally qualified health centers, and state and other health departments directly receiving federal immunization funds (grantees).
NAMCS uses a multi-stage sampling strategy, with providers sampled randomly within defined geographic areas, known as primary sampling units (PSUs).
The number of health-care providers sampled varied across country/topic (100 to 140) as did the response rates (0.44 to 1.00).
The care providers' sample also ensured diversity of professional contexts, institutional status (6 were in exclusive private practice, 6 exclusive public practice, 2 both) and gender (6 women).
We will also interview health plan providers, sampling from among those with high numbers of A/C referrals, those with some A/C referral history, and those who never or almost never refer CMP patients for acupuncture or chiropractic services.
Additionally, contact details for the sample providers (sample custodians) were added to each of the UK10K studies in the EGA and were also listed with the sample set descriptions on the project website, so that data users could direct queries to an appropriate contact after the MC had disbanded.
The analysis process indicated that data saturation was reached for the client and provider samples in both countries.
For state and territory samples, probability of selection was proportionate to AIDS prevalence; for provider samples, probability of selection was proportionate to HIV-infected patient census.
We first mapped and interviewed all the IPs in the study areas and then drew our provider samples from the mapped data.
