14. Centre Report

(see example of a centre report in section 20.5)

A personalised Centre Report will be sent to you when you register your centre with the GAN Global Centre. The Centre Report is an important document, designed to assist each Global Asthma Network centre and the GAN Global Centre to accurately document centre methodology. The following notes may be of assistance when the Centre Report is being completed. We encourage you to contact the GAN Global Centre if there is anything that is unclear.

We advise collaborators to read the Centre Report through when you receive it, as there may be questions that you can answer at the time of undertaking the field work.

Questions

1.3                   If not previously sent in ISAAC, a detailed map of the area or city, clearly showing the geographical boundaries of your study area. Ideally, the map will be a vector or shape file compatible with Geographic Information Software such as ArcGIS (available from http://www.arcgis.com/). If this is not possible, a hand drawn and scanned map drawn on a commercial street map or printout of google maps or similar will be acceptable. This should be sent to the GAN Global Centre with the completed centre report.

1.4 – 1.8          It is important to document the reasons why schools are excluded and the reasons why collaborators reject schools after they have been selected. Some schools are excluded before the sampling frame has been set and some schools are rejected by the researchers after they have agreed to take part.

1.9                   This question has 2 parts. Part A asks for the total number of schools in the sampling frame that was chosen and Part B asks for the total number of children for the selected age group that were in these schools.

2.1                   Centres may use different methods of selecting children within schools: ‘grade/level/year’ where the classes with most children in the age group are selected to participate; ‘age group’ where only children in the age group, regardless of grade/level/year are selected to participate; and ‘other’ methods, that may include elements of these two methods. If ‘other’ selected, please describe.

3.1 – 3.4          Double entry of 10% of the data is expected to minimise data entry errors. If some data has not been double entered a detailed explanation of method employed and quality checks are necessary.

4.1 – 4.8          Collaborators are encouraged to check the demographic details on the questionnaires and amend if necessary. For example a pupil may have inserted the wrong birth date - this can be corrected using the information obtained from the school. All changes must be documented (see section 20.8). It is not permissible to change any other data. All data must be entered into the computer as given in the questionnaire and original data submitted to the GAN Global Centre.

5.1 – 5.6          These questions allow us to calculate the response rate and the participation rate of the schools and pupils. The answers to questions 5.5 and 5.6 will add up to the answer you gave for question 5.2.

6.1 – 6.13        Any translations of the English language questionnaire should have a uniform approach. If centres use a translation already developed, the GAN Global Centre would like to know.

Thank you for reading and completing this report. The GAN Global Centre will be able to produce accurate details for future publications.

Philippa Ellwood Eamon Ellwood and Innes Asher - Global Asthma Network Global Centre. Phone: 64 9 3737599 extension 6451 Fax: 64 9 3737602

Email: info@globalasthmanetwork.org