No evidence of response bias in a population-based childhood cancer survivor questionnaire survey — Results from the Swiss Childhood Cancer Survivor Study

PurposeThis is the first study to quantify potential nonresponse bias in a childhood cancer survivor questionnaire survey. We describe early and late responders and nonresponders, and estimate nonresponse bias in a nationwide questionnaire survey of survivors.MethodsIn the Swiss Childhood Cancer Survivor Study, we compared characteristics of early responders (who answered an initial questionnaire), late responders (who answered after ≥1 reminder) and nonresponders. Sociodemographic and cancer-related information was available for the whole population from the Swiss Childhood Cancer Registry. We compared observed prevalence of typical outcomes in responders to the expected prevalence in a complete (100% response) representative population we constructed in order to estimate the effect of nonresponse bias. We constructed the complete population using inverse probability of participation weights.ResultsOf 2328 survivors, 930 returned the initial questionnaire (40%); 671 returned the questionnaire after ≥1reminder (29%). Compared to early and late responders, we found that the 727 nonresponders (31%) were more likely male, aged ConclusionNonresponse bias may play only a minor role in childhood cancer survivor studies, suggesting that results can be generalized to the whole population of such cancer survivors and applied in clinical practice.