Evaluation & the health professions
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Despite advances in the storage and retrieval of information within health care systems, health researchers conducting surveys for evaluations still face technical barriers that may lead to sampling bias. The authors describe their experience in administering a Web-based, international survey to English-speaking countries. ⋯ Sampling bias arose from (a) system incompatibility, which did not allow potential respondents to open the survey, (b) varying institutional gate-keeping policies that "recognized" the unsolicited survey as spam, (c) culturally unique program terminology, which confused some respondents, and (d) incomplete sampling frames. Solutions are offered to the first three problems, and the authors note that sampling bias remains a crucial problem.