Prospective Research in Health Service Settings: Health Psychology, Science and the ‘Hawthorne’ Effect

Ian O'Sullivan; Sheina Orbell; Tim Rakow; Ron Parker

doi:10.1177/1359105304042345

Prospective Research in Health Service Settings: Health Psychology, Science and the ‘Hawthorne’ Effect

Ian O'Sullivan, Sheina Orbell^*, Tim Rakow, Ron Parker

^*Corresponding author for this work

Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

36 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Health service providers sometimes express concern about the impact of prospective survey research upon patient behaviour. To date, there is little available evidence from which to estimate the likelihood of any 'Hawthorne' effect on patient behaviour in health service settings. We analysed data from one of our own surveys to investigate whether inviting people to participate in research had any impact on their subsequent uptake of a screening service. Findings showed that people sent a questionnaire were slightly faster to take up screening than those not sent a questionnaire. We obtained no significant difference in absolute service uptake rate at six months.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	355-359
Number of pages	5
Journal	Journal of Health Psychology
Volume	9
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105304042345
Publication status	Published - May 2004

Keywords

Hawthorne effect
Participation/uptake
Prospective
Survey

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10.1177/1359105304042345

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Prospective Research in Health Service Settings: Health Psychology, Science and the ‘Hawthorne’ Effect

Abstract

Keywords

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