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For Debate Local health and lifestyle surveys - do the results justify the costs?

Bardsley, Martin, Jenkins, Linda M., Jacobson, Bobbie (1998) For Debate Local health and lifestyle surveys - do the results justify the costs? Journal of Public Health Medicine, 20 (1). pp. 52-57. ISSN 0957-4832. (KAR id:24559)

Abstract

A recent review of health and lifestyle surveys conducted in general adult populations within London attempted to compare the results of these surveys. Although only the most common aspects of health and lifestyle were compared there were few points of comparison between surveys and major differences in technique and structure of questions. There were also few results where health-related behaviour differed significantly from what one would expect from national surveys. It is suggested that local surveys on general adult populations are often too small to reveal new information with any confidence and that the cost of a larger survey may be hard to justify. Though monitoring and health surveillance are important a general population survey for large geographic areas such as health authorities is not always the best approach and more focused surveys should be preferred as well as methods which exploit existing sources of information.

Keywords: health and lifestyle surveys, health-related behaviour surveys, needs assessment

Item Type: Article
Subjects: R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research > Centre for Health Services Studies
Depositing User: Tony Rees
Date Deposited: 29 Jun 2011 14:15 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:03 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/24559 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Jenkins, Linda M..

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