University of Western Australia, Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Centre for Child Health Research, Perth, Western Australia.
Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol. 2012 May;26(3):276-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-3016.2011.01253.x. Epub 2012 Feb 23.
An Australian study of childhood leukaemia (Aus-ALL) previously reported that control participation was positively associated with socio-economic status (SES). A similar study of childhood brain tumours (Aus-CBT) was carried out 4 years later, and this paper compares control participation and its relationship with SES in the two studies. To assess the representativeness of controls in terms of SES, the addresses of controls were linked to Australian Bureau of Statistics Census 2006 Collection Districts (CDs), and hence to area-based indices of SES. Independent sample t-tests and chi-squared tests were used to compare the SES indices of CDs where Aus-CBT controls lived with those where Aus-ALL controls lived and with those of all CDs where Australian families lived. The overall percentage of eligible families who agreed to participate was lower in Aus-CBT (53.9%) than in Aus-ALL (70.3%). Control families in both studies were of higher SES than the general population, while the distribution of SES among recruited controls was similar in both studies. These findings provide some reassurance that the observed decline in research participation over time may not be associated with an increasingly unrepresentative participant population.
一项澳大利亚儿童白血病研究（Aus-ALL）先前报告称，对照组的参与与社会经济地位（SES）呈正相关。4 年后开展了一项类似的儿童脑瘤研究（Aus-CBT），本文比较了这两项研究中的对照组参与情况及其与 SES 的关系。为了评估对照组在 SES 方面的代表性，将对照组的地址与澳大利亚统计局 2006 年人口普查集区（CD）相关联，进而与 SES 的基于区域的指标相关联。使用独立样本 t 检验和卡方检验比较了 Aus-CBT 对照组居住的 CD 的 SES 指数与 Aus-ALL 对照组居住的 CD 的 SES 指数以及所有澳大利亚家庭居住的 CD 的 SES 指数。Aus-CBT（53.9%）中同意参与的合格家庭的总体百分比低于 Aus-ALL（70.3%）。两项研究中的对照组家庭的 SES 均高于一般人群，而在两项研究中，招募的对照组的 SES 分布相似。这些发现提供了一些保证，即随着时间的推移，研究参与率的下降可能与代表性越来越差的参与者群体无关。
