Effect of hand versus electronic signatures on response rates in postal surveys: a randomised controlled trial among emergency physicians in Canada

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

Hand signatures offer a more authentic personalisation, which carries over to a sense of trust, although are costly and time-consuming when considering large postal surveys. The objective of this study was to compare response rates when using either hand-signed or electronic-signed letters in a postal survey.

Design and setting

We embedded this randomised controlled trial within a national cross-sectional postal survey of emergency physicians in Canada. The survey aimed to describe current practice patterns with respect to primary headache disorders.

Participants

We randomly sampled 500 emergency physicians listed in the Scott’s Canadian Medical Directory, 2019 edition.

Interventions

Using computer-generated random numbers, physicians were all

SUBMITTER: Patel D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9362779 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature