Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Nov 16, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Nov 22, 2018 - Jan 17, 2019
Date Accepted: Jun 10, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Using practical thresholds and existing statistical methods to identify attrition phases
ABSTRACT
Background:
Although Web-based questionnaires are an efficient, increasingly popular mode of data collection, their utility is often challenged by high participant dropout. Researchers can gain insight into potential causes of high dropout by analyzing dropout patterns.
Objective:
To propose and investigate user-specified and existing hypothesis testing methods applied in a novel setting, survey dropout data, in order to identify attrition phases.
Methods:
First, we propose the application of user-specified thresholds to identify abrupt differences in the dropout rate. Then, we propose the application of existing hypothesis testing methods detect significant differences in participant dropout. We assess these methods through a simulation study and application to a case study, featuring a questionnaire addressing decision-making surrounding cancer screening.
Results:
All three proposed methods were too sensitive but a low user-specified threshold performed best at accurately detecting phases of high attrition in both the simulation study and test case application.
Conclusions:
The user-specified method set to a low threshold correctly identified attrition phases. Hypothesis testing methods, while at times sensitive, were unable to accurately identify attrition phases. These results strengthen the case for further development of and research surrounding the science of attrition.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.