Pirie P L, Thomson S J, Mann S L, Peterson A V, Murray D M, Flay B R, Best J A
Division of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455.
Prev Med. 1989 Mar;18(2):249-56. doi: 10.1016/0091-7435(89)90072-8.
Research in the development of school-based smoking prevention programs has resulted in a set of approaches of known short-term efficacy. Further evaluation of these approaches now requires long-term follow-up of participants. To minimize the problems caused by attrition in these longitudinal studies, investigators have developed techniques for tracking study participants. Based primarily on the use of the telephone, mail, and public documents, these methods require good background information on both the study participants and their parents. This article summarizes the experience of three teams of researchers engaged in such follow-up studies. These investigators have identified the types of background information most useful in long-term follow-up of participants, have developed a set of strategies to obtain such background information, and have developed methods for successfully tracking participants after a lapse of several years.
对以学校为基础的吸烟预防项目开展的研究已产生了一系列具有已知短期效果的方法。现在对这些方法进行进一步评估需要对参与者进行长期随访。为了尽量减少这些纵向研究中因人员流失所造成的问题，研究人员已开发出追踪研究参与者的技术。这些方法主要基于电话、邮件和公共文件的使用，需要有关研究参与者及其父母的良好背景信息。本文总结了三个研究团队开展此类随访研究的经验。这些研究人员已确定了在对参与者进行长期随访中最有用的背景信息类型，已制定出一套获取此类背景信息的策略，并已开发出在数年之后成功追踪参与者的方法。
