Chapter 2. Survey Administration Statistics

2007 Comparative Database Report

Highlights

  • The 2007 database consists of data from 108,621 hospital staff respondents across 382 participating hospitals.
  • The average hospital response rate was 56 percent, with an average of 284 completed surveys per hospital.
  • Most hospitals (56 percent) administered paper surveys, which resulted in higher response rates (62 percent response) compared to Web (43 percent response) or mixed mode surveys (53 percent response).
  • Most hospitals (79 percent) administered the survey to all staff or a sample of all staff from all hospital departments.

The 2007 database consists of survey data from 382 hospitals with a total of 108,621 hospital staff respondents. Participating hospitals administered the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture to their hospital staff between October 2004 and July 2006, and voluntarily submitted their data for inclusion into the database.

An average of 284 completed surveys were submitted per hospital (range: 11 to 3,684), with an average hospital response rate of 56 percent (range: 6 percent to 100 percent) (Table 2-1).

Most hospitals administered only paper surveys (56 percent), followed by Web (25 percent) and mixed mode administrations involving both paper and Web surveys (19 percent) (Table 2-2).

As shown in Table 2-3, paper survey administrations received a considerably higher average response rate (62 percent) than Web (43 percent) or mixed mode administrations (53 percent). It is therefore still recommended overall that hospitals conduct the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture as a paper survey, but each hospital should take into consideration its own prior experience with survey modes and response rates when determining which mode is best.

Most hospitals (79 percent, or 302) administered the survey to a census of all hospital staff, or a sample of staff, from all hospital departments; fewer hospitals (21 percent, or 80) administered the survey to a subset of selected staff and/or departments Table 2-4). Ten hospitals did not administer the entire survey; they excluded one or more of the nondemographic survey items. Those 10 hospitals were excluded from composite calculations if they omitted one or more of the items within a particular composite, but were included in item-level calculations for those items they retained.

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Page last reviewed December 2012
Internet Citation: Chapter 2. Survey Administration Statistics: 2007 Comparative Database Report. December 2012. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. https://archive.ahrq.gov/professionals/quality-patient-safety/patientsafetyculture/hospital/2007/hospdbch2.html