Daily surveillance of falls is feasible and reveals a high incidence of falls among older adults
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(Published version)
Date
2022
Authors
Antcliff, S.R.
Witchalls, J.B.
Wallwork, S.B.
Welvaert, M.
Waddington, G.S.
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Journal article
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Australasian Journal on Ageing, 2022; 41(2):e201-e205
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Abstract
Objective: To ensure accurate data capture for a fall study through a system of daily contact with participants. Methods: Fifty-eight adults older than 60 years of age and living independently in the community in Canberra, Australia, were recruited for a prospective fall study. We adopted a system of daily contact with study participants for at least 12 months, either by email or by text, asking whether they had suffered a fall in the previous 24 h. At the final testing session, we asked participants whether they had experienced a fall during the previous twelve months.
Results: We found no evidence that the daily reporting regime led to excess participant attrition. Only three participants withdrew over the course of the study, and the burden of responding was not cited as a factor in any of these cases. Of the 55 participants who completed the full twelve-month study period, 38 (69%) experienced at least one fall. We also identified inconsistencies between recall of falls occurring during the last twelve months of the study and the contemporaneously recorded data.
Conclusions: Previous studies have found that increasing the reporting demands on fall study participants will lead to higher attrition. This study demonstrates that it is possible to maintain participant engagement and minimise attrition with appropriate design of reporting procedures. We confirm existing evidence regarding the unreliability of retrospective recall of falls. The study highlights the importance of comprehensive and accurate data capture and points to the possibility of under-reporting of fall incidence.
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Data source: Supporting information, https://doi.org/10.1111/ajag.13058
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Copyright 2022 the authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)