Feasibility of using postal questionnaires to examine carer satisfaction with palliative care: a methodological assessment

This paper reports on the methodological findings from a project which exam ined the feasibility of using a postal questionnaire to assess lay carer sa tisfaction with palliative care. The focus of this paper is the process of questionnaire development and its psychometric evaluation. The questionnair e was derived from an interview schedule used in previous national surveys of care for the dying, and was refined through qualitative work with recent ly bereaved lay carers. It was then tested in a postal survey of 355 lay ca rers identified from death registration certificates. Overall response rate s were low, but significantly enhanced by the use of a single reminder sent 3 weeks after the initial mailshot. The analysis indicated that in the maj ority of cases the person targeted to receive the questionnaire was the mos t appropriate informant. Psychometric evaluation of the questionnaire again st five criteria was encouraging, with low item nonresponse and ineligible response, and some evidence of discriminatory power, reliability and face a nd content validity. Postal approaches appear to represent an acceptable me ans of assessing user satisfaction with palliative care, compared with more resource-intensive methods.