Inpharma 1668 - 13 Dec 2008

All things are better withchocolate?

Have you ever conducted a survey and beendisappointed at the lack of response? Well, a group ofNorwegian-based researchers tried a novel approach toaddress this problem: they included one bar of darkchocolate with their survey form! However, despite thewell-known popularity of chocolate, "adding one bar ofchocolate did not seem to be a sufficiently strongincentive to increase the response rate".

In this study, Norwegian physiotherapists wererandomly assigned to an intervention group who weregiven a chocolate bar with their data collection form togather information on the treatment of patients withknee osteoarthritis (n = 1027) or a control group whoreceived the data collection form without chocolate(1027). A response was received from a total of510 physiotherapists, with no difference at the end ofthe study between the chocolate and no chocolategroups, with response rates of 13.8% and 13.4%,respectively.Jamtvedt G, et al. Chocolate bar as an incentive did not increase response rateamong physiotherapists: a randomised controlled trial. BMC Research Notes 1:Online first [4 pages], No. 34, 24 Jun 2008 801108256

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Inpharma 13 Dec 2008 No. 16681173-8324/10/1668-0001/$14.95 Adis © 2010 Springer International Publishing AG. All rights reserved