Design and use of questionnaires: a review of best practice applicable to surveys of health service staff and patients.

Questionnaires are often used to collect primaryquantitative data from patients and healthcareprofessionals. The aim is to gather valid, reliable,unbiased and discriminatory data from a represen-tative sample of respondents. However, theinformation yielded is subject to error and biasfrom a range of sources. Close attention to issuesof questionnaire design and survey administrationcan reduce these errors.

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