Alcohol screening in A&E - privacy and mode effects on data quality.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Detection of harmful alcohol users in Secondary Care – A comparative analysis of different privacy settings and mode effects on data quality.
IRAS ID
183925
Contact name
Pippa Bark
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University College London Sponsor Rep
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
UCL Data Protection Registration reference No , Z6364106/2015/06/72
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 1 months, 10 days
Research summary
The planned study is a linked mixed method study of alcohol screening patients presenting to Accident & Emergency (A&E) department at Barnet NHS Trust hospital.
The proposed study focuses on the effect that different privacy conditions (confidential versus anonymous) and administration modes (self-completion versus interviewer-administered) can have on the quality of alcohol screening data.
Patients admitted to the local Accident & Emergency (A&E) department and who meet the inclusion criteria will be completing the following 2 forms:
- Fast Alcohol Screening Test (FAST) – existing validated measure, which is used by the Trust for routine patient alcohol screening; therefore fully embedded within current clinical practice and will ensure consistency;
- Short qualitative questionnaire – aimed at exploring patients’ screening preferences, perceived confidentiality/anonymity and reasons as to why patients might under/over-report their alcohol use in confidential but medically managed questionnaires.
The study will look at 3 different combinations of privacy settings and administration modes. In all of them participants will complete the short questionnaire anonymously:
1) Anonymous self-completion of FAST form;
2) Confidential interview-administered FAST screening and;
3) Confidential self-completion of FAST form, referred to as ‘control condition’.
The latter matches the current screening process as part of patients A&E registration and which will continue to operate as usual to ensure continuous service provision. Therefore, any patient who is admitted to A&E and matches the inclusion criteria set out in 5.3 of the Project Proposal and who agrees to participate will automatically be assigned to two groups at a time, one being the ‘control condition’ and the other one will be determined at random (anonymous self-completion or confidential interview-administered). This matched/paired data will be linked to the survey questionnaire data and a pre-determined set of anonymised hospital administration data via a unique reference number for further analysis by the researcher.REC name
East of Scotland Research Ethics Service REC 1
REC reference
15/ES/0114
Date of REC Opinion
20 Jul 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion