Can an emailed questionnaire successfully ascertain information about falls in people over 60 years?

The Tasmanian electronic falls ascertainment tool (TASeFALL) – pilot study: Evaluating the efficacy of an email format falls questionnaire for improving response rates in older people attending a blood pressure clinic.

Status

Recruiting

Phases

Unknown

Study type

Interventional

Source

ANZCTR

Registry ID

ACTRN12616000358448

Acronym

TASeFALL

Enrollment

Registered

2016-03-21

Start date

2016-05-06

Completion date

2017-05-04

Last updated

2020-01-13

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

None listed

Brief summary

Over 40% of older people living in the community fall each year. In clinical practice, recent guidelines recommend that older people be regularly asked about falls and their circumstances. Ascertaining falls is also important to measure the success of any intervention. In research settings previous studies have found that asking about falls 3- or 12-monthly results in under reporting of falls compared with a daily calendar returned monthly with telephone or paper-based questionnaire follow-up to determine the circumstances of falls. This method of a daily falls calendar and monthly follow-up by questionnaire or telephone call has been well validated and is now considered to be the gold standard in falls ascertainment. However, this method is labour and cost intensive as every month there are postage costs, need to manually check that the calendar has been returned (previous studies have reported 30% need follow-up), telephoning to determine circumstances of falls and data or medical file entry by a research assistant or clinician. Therefore there is an important need to improve the way falls ascertainment is conducted. We aim to undertake the world first testing of a novel emailed electronic falls ascertainment tool (TASeFALL) that reminds participants to complete the electronic questionnaire, with responses automatically fed into a database or clinicians email.

Interventions

Intervention group: The intervention group will receive the a questionnaire about falls (type, location, time and injury) and their circumstances that will be sent by email each month (TASeFALL). The responses and number of reminder emails sent will be automatically recorded in a database. Reminder emails will be sent every 3 days.

Study design

Allocation

Randomised controlled trial

Intervention model

Parallel

Primary purpose

Diagnosis

Masking

Blinded (masking used) (Investigator, Outcomes Assessor)

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

All

Age

60 Years to No maximum

Healthy volunteers

Yes

Inclusion criteria

>=60 years Attending the Menzies Institute for Medical Research Blood Pressure Clinic

Exclusion criteria

Exclusion criteria: Dementia (Self-reported history of dementia or less than 18/30 on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MOCA) – routinely obtained at the blood pressure clinic); no email access or severe visual impairment so as unable to complete a questionnaire.

Outcome results