The 1996 and 1997 National survey of physician asthma management practices: background and study methodology.

OBJECTIVES: To collect national baseline information on asthma management practices by physicians, and to compare these practices with the recommendations of the Canadian Asthma Consensus Conference ('the guidelines').

DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey of representative samples of physicians in Canada in late 1996 and early 1997.

POPULATION STUDIED: Five specialty types of physicians who manage asthma patients: respirology, pediatrics, internal medicine, allergy and clinical immunology, and general practice and family medicine. Stratified sampling by province and specialty was used to select physicians for the study. Weighting was used in the analysis to generalize the results to the national level for the five specialty groups of physicians.

METHOD: Mailed questionnaire, self-administered by the respondent; three mailings of the questionnaires were used to increase the response rate.

MAIN RESULTS: The frequency with which each of the five specialty types chose specific asthma management choices was determined, using weighted percentages representative of the specialty groups on a national basis. ANOVA determined the statistically significant differences among the five specialties in choosing particular asthma management actions. Then, logistic regression was used to calculate the odds ratios showing an association between the characteristics of the physician respondents and specific asthma management choices that they made in the survey.

CONCLUSIONS: The data analysis demonstrated significant variations among physicians in asthma management practices, according to specialty type and other characteristics. The initial report was released in April 1998, and manuscripts for journal submissions are being prepared.