Willems, Barbara http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6797-9191
Bracke, Piet
Funding for this research was provided by:
Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds
Article History
Received: 14 June 2018
Accepted: 21 November 2018
First Online: 4 December 2018
Ethics approval and consent to participate
: The Belgian Health Interview Survey was conducted by Statistics Belgium and exempted by law from requiring ethics approval. Authorisation to use the survey data was obtained from the Belgian Commission for the Protection of Privacy.In the survey, a (matched) substitution procedure was applied. Before the data collection, clusters of four similar households (in terms of statistical sector, household size and age of the reference person) were created. Households within a cluster were arranged at random. During data collection the reference person of the households selected for participation were contacted. The first contact attempt took place shortly after receiving the addresses of the selected households. For all attempts that resulted in an actual contact (the mode of contact, phone or doorstep, was up to the interviewer), the interviewer made an appointment for the actual interview when the household reference person agreed to participate on behalf of all of his/her household members. In case the reference person did not give his/her consent, it was not possible for other household members to participate (the inverse, intra-household refusal, was possible but rare).
: Coded data were used for this article. According to the Belgian privacy legislation, participants in studies in which coded data are used are not required to grant consent for their data to be used, but they must be informed about their use. Each of the families selected for the Belgian Health Interview Survey received a letter of invitation, accompanied by an information leaflet explaining what the health survey entails, the types of questions that would be asked during the interview and which institutions are eligible to use the data.
: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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