Table 2

Patient^a groups contributing to the development of the four questionnaires.

Questionnaire (country)	Development stage	Setting	Gross n	Reminders	Net, n (response rate %)
Patient Satisfaction with Out-of-Hours Care (UK)11	Two focus groups	Patients and carers recruited from general practice registers and community groups			11

	Semi-structured interviews	Patients recently requesting out-of-hours care from two large city practices or deputising service			28

	Preliminary interviews	Patients recently requesting out-of-hours care from two large city practices or deputising service			41

	Postal pilots	Within 72 hours of patients or carers requesting out-of-hours care at Leicester (n = 6) and Manchester (n = 1) practices			378^b

	Main survey interviews	Within 24–129 hours of patients requesting out-of-hours care at Leicester (n = 3) and Manchester (n = 11) practices	1466		1402 (95.6)

	Test–retest	Return of a second questionnaire the same day as the main survey	200		112 (56.0)

Van Uden questionnaire (the Netherlands)19	Main postal survey	Patients and carers contacting GP cooperatives across regions in the South of the Netherlands were mailed questionnaire within 3 weeks	2733	1 reminder at 3–4 weeks	1160 (42.4)

SQOC (UK)7	Pilot studies	Three sites in Scotland

	Main postal survey^c	Patients transferred to a single GP cooperative during a 6-week period mailed a questionnaire within 7 days	748	1 reminder	342 (45.7)

Moll Van Charante (the Netherlands)5	Panel review of items	Patients from a regional patient federation			6

	Postal pilot	Consecutive patients or carers within 48 hours of request for care	696	No	285 (41.0)

	Review of items	Patients recently contacting a cooperative (n = 13)

	Postal pilot			No	87 (48.3)

	Main postal survey	26 GP cooperatives covering 25% of the Dutch population sent questionnaires to 200 consecutive patients within 48 hours of contact	14 400	1 reminder after 10 days	7520 (52.2)

	Test–retest	Responders from one cooperative from the main survey mailed at 1 week	338		155 (45.9)

↵a Data relating to responder characteristics were both inconsistently and seldom reported across studies and hence are not reported here.
↵b Response rates were over 50% in most practices.10
↵c Three different questionnaires were used; one with the SQOC only, one with a longer questionnaire and one with both. The table includes the results for the SQOC only questionnaire. SQOC = Short Questionnaire for Out-of-Hours Care.