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BMJ No 7107 Volume 315 Information in practice Saturday 30 August 1997 Netpoints: Piloting patient attitudinal surveys on the web Developing surveys to elicit patients' attitudes is difficult, time consuming, and costly. To pilot an attitudinal questionnaire for women in families affected by endometriosis, we constructed a web site (http://www.well.ox.ac.uk/endometriosis) with a consent page followed by 25 multiple choice questions and six free response questions. We then sent a single invitation to participate in the study to over 700 members of an internet mailing list called WITSENDO, which is open to anyone with an interest in endometriosis. We recorded responses via email directly into a database for analysis. In one month we received 81 hits, from 74 individuals, and 54 responses to the survey. Response rates to the multiple choice questions ranged from 48% to 100%, with only six questions answered less than 95% of the time. We assumed these differences identified poorly constructed questions, which we then modified based on these pilot observations. We thought that we could easily determine participants' nationalities from the computer host names recorded with their replies. Ten (19%) of the respondents' computers did not have host names, only internet protocol addresses. Although we used specialised software to trace these addresses, the task was technically difficult and we do not recommend it. Our method elicited many responses in a short time. We received 42 (78%) replies within one day of emailing our invitation to WITSENDO members, about 10% of whom accessed our web site. Our invitation could have easily been overlooked given WITSENDO's high message volume. Multiple invitations spaced several days apart would have increased participation. We believe the web is a powerful resource for developing surveys in a quick and effective manner. Marc A Suchard Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7BN (marc.suchard@well.ox.ac.uk) Stephanie Adamson Nuffield Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford OX3 9DU Stephen Kennedy Nuffield Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Oxford (skennedy@worf.molbiol.ox.ac.uk) Home | Current issue | Past issues | Classified ads | Career Focus | Feedback Collections | About this site | About the BMJ | BMA | Medline