Bertoldi Andréa D, Barros Aluísio J D, Wagner Anita, Ross-Degnan Dennis, Hallal Pedro C
Programa de pós-graduação em Saúde Coletiva, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brazil.
BMC Health Serv Res. 2008 Oct 31;8:222. doi: 10.1186/1472-6963-8-222.
Studies carried out in the community enable researchers to understand access to medicines, affordability, and barriers to use from the consumer's point of view, and may stimulate the development of adequate medicines policies. The aim of the present article was to describe methodological and analytical aspects of quantitative studies on medicine utilization carried out at the household level.
Systematic review of original papers with data collected in studies in which the household was a sampling unit, published between 1995 and 2008. The electronic review was carried out in Medline/Pubmed, Scielo and Lilacs. The reference lists of the papers identified were examined, as well as other publications by their authors. Studies on the utilization of specific pharmacological groups, or those including only respondents with a given disease were excluded.
Out of 4852 papers initially identified in the literature search, 61 fulfilled our inclusion criteria. Most studies were carried out in Europe and North America and used a cross-sectional approach. More than 80% used face-to-face interviews for data collection, and the most frequently used recall period for assessing medicine utilization was 14-15 days. In 59% of the studies, interviewers were trained to request the packaging of the medicines reported by the subjects; medical prescriptions were requested less frequently (15% of the studies).
These data will be useful for updating researchers on what methods their peers are currently using. Such information may help overcome challenges in the planning and analyses of future studies. Moreover, this publication may contribute to the improvement of the quality of medicine use data obtained in household surveys.
在社区开展的研究能让研究者从消费者角度了解药品的可及性、可负担性及使用障碍，还可能推动制定适当的药品政策。本文旨在描述在家庭层面开展的药品使用定量研究的方法学和分析方面。
对1995年至2008年期间发表的、以家庭为抽样单位收集数据的原始论文进行系统综述。通过Medline/Pubmed、Scielo和Lilacs进行电子检索。检查所识别论文的参考文献列表以及作者的其他出版物。排除关于特定药理组使用情况的研究，或仅纳入患有特定疾病受访者的研究。
在文献检索最初识别出的4852篇论文中，61篇符合我们的纳入标准。大多数研究在欧洲和北美开展，采用横断面研究方法。超过80%的研究使用面对面访谈收集数据，评估药品使用最常用的回忆期为14 - 15天。在59%的研究中，访谈者接受培训以要求受试者提供所报告药品的包装；要求提供医疗处方的情况较少（15%的研究）。
这些数据将有助于让研究者了解同行目前正在使用的方法。此类信息可能有助于克服未来研究规划和分析中的挑战。此外，本出版物可能有助于提高家庭调查中获得的药品使用数据的质量。
