Prevalence and Characterization of Asymptomatic Thyroid Nodules in Assin North District, Ghana

Study design and sampling

The study was cross-sectional involving six (6) communities in the Assin North District of the Central Region of Ghana. Ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board of the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, with this reference number: UCCIRB/EXT/2017/18. All community entry protocols with local authorities were observed before the study commenced.  Further, protocol involving informed consent was also duly observed during and after this study. Both verbal and written consent were obtained from each participant prior to participation. Participation in the study was strictly on voluntary basis.

Each of these six (6) communities was considered a stratum in which all households were listed to constitute a sampling frame from which the respective number of households in each community were sampled using systematic random sampling technique. The sampling interval (Kth) in each community was determined by dividing the total number of listed households (N) by the number of households respectively require (n) (based on proportion-to-population size) as shown in Table 1. The simple random sampling technique was then employed to select the first household (i