ArticleEpidemiology and infection2018
Online market research panel members as controls in case-control studies to investigate gastrointestinal disease outbreaks: early experiences and lessons learnt from the UK.
Article in Epidemiology and infection, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Workplace exposures associated with COVID-19: evidence from a case-control study with multiple sampling periods in England, August-October 2020.Epidemiology and infection · 2022Pooled it
- A comparison of using online market panel members and traditional methods in control recruitment for a case-control study during a national outbreak of STEC O145, United Kingdom.Epidemiology and infection · 2026Article
- National outbreak of Shiga toxin-producingEpidemiology and infection · 2024Article
- Lessons Learned From a Sequential Mixed-Mode Survey Design to Recruit and Collect Data From Case-Control Study Participants: Formative Evaluation.JMIR formative research · 2024Article
- Recruiting controls from an online panel for a case-control study enabled a timely and reliable foodborneEpidemiology and infection · 2023Article
- Use of a non-probabilistic online panel as a control group for case-control studies to investigate food and waterborne outbreaks in Lower Saxony, Germany.Epidemiology and infection · 2022Article
- Retrospective assessment of rapid outbreak investigation for gastrointestinal diseases using only cases and background exposure data.Epidemiology and infection · 2020Article
- Are food exposures obtained through commercial market panels representative of the general population? Implications for outbreak investigations.Epidemiology and infection · 2019Article
- Online market research panel members as controls in case-control studies to investigate gastrointestinal disease outbreaks: early experiences and lessons learnt from the UK - ERRATUM.Epidemiology and infection · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Established methods of recruiting population controls for case-control studies to investigate gastrointestinal disease outbreaks can be time consuming, resulting in delays in identifying the source or vehicle of infection. After an initial evaluation of using online market research panel members as controls in a case-control study to investigate a Salmonella outbreak in 2013, this method was applied in four further studies in the UK between 2014 and 2016. We used data from all five studies and interviews with members of each outbreak control team and market research panel provider to review operational issues, evaluate risk of bias in this approach and consider methods to reduce confounding and bias. The investigators of each outbreak reported likely time and cost savings from using market research controls. There were systematic differences between case and control groups in some studies but no evidence that conclusions on the likely source or vehicle of infection were incorrect. Potential selection biases introduced by using this sampling frame and the low response rate are unclear. Methods that might reduce confounding and some bias should be balanced with concerns for overmatching. Further evaluation of this approach using comparisons with traditional methods and population-based exposure survey data is recommended.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.