Results of the pilot project of the CIP Perinatal Surveillance Project - abstract

ABSTRACT

In September, 1992, a series of training sessions was commenced on the islands of St. Martin and Guadeloupe to collaboratively develop a data collection instrument with operational definitions for the first stage of a CIP research project, focused on undertaking a multi-island descriptive assessment of perinatal deliveries in the Caribbean. These meetings resulted in the development of an international, transcultural, multi-lingual epidemiological surveillance tool that was pilot-tested from December, 1992 to March, 1993. This communication will present the data collection instruments, the procedures for determining the operational definitions unique to each data collection team, and the initial results of the pilot test. In addition to reviewing the socio-demographic and medical risk characteristics of the population surveyed, a discussion of the problems encountered with reporting completeness, and data validity will be presented. Specific emphasis will be placed on reviewing the potential problems to data interpretation that stem from variations in item operational definitions, between data collection sites. Finally, the presentation will introduce the new project summary reports that were developed to provide quarterly information to each participating data collection site and suggestions for expanding this project to other interested islands (AU)