Rationale and development of a survey tool for describing and auditing the composition of, and flows between, specialist and community clinical services for sexually transmitted infections

Table 2 Sociodemographic characteristics of patients participating in cognitive interviews

Characteristic ¹		Number of patients	Source of data
Gender	Female	7	Self-reported in questionnaire
	Male	6
Age	15-19	1
	20-24	1
	25-29	4
	30-34	4
	35-39	1
	40-45	2
Sexuality²	Heterosexual	9
	Homosexual	1
	Bisexual	2
	Not asked	1
Ethnicity	White	9	Assessed by interviewer³
	Black	2
	Asian	2
Other information	English not main language	2	Spontaneous, self-reported
	'My reading's rubbish' (native-speaker)	1

The demographic breakdown was considered by clinic staff to be broadly representative of their clinic population. However, it is worth noting that patients at this clinic tended to be slightly older and more likely to be from professional backgrounds than patients attending the study's other GUM clinics but for logistical reasons it was only feasible to undertake the cognitive interviews in one GUM clinic.
Based on reported gender of sexual partner(s) in the last year.
Assessed by the interviewer (CA) for the cognitive interview data only. During survey implementation, LESSH patients self-reported their ethnicity, and GUM patients' ethnicity was obtained later from the clinical data extract.

ISSN: 1472-6963