Further information on the GP Patient Survey results – Frequently Asked Questions
You may have some questions about the GP Patient Survey and this results website; please find below some information on various aspects of the survey and how to access the results.
This page will provide you with answers to a number of frequently asked questions (FAQs) related to the GP Patient Survey. When you click on a question topic, the page will automatically scroll down to the corresponding answer. At any time you can click the link underneath your chosen FAQ to return to the contents at the top of the page.
For further information on the GP Patient Survey please visit the survey website by clicking here.
Survey information
Confidentiality information
Accessing the results information
Weighted data information
Why is this survey taking place?
The GP Patient Survey is part of the Government’s commitment to make the NHS more responsive to patients’ needs. The survey asks patients about a range of issues, such as how easy or difficult it is for patients to make an appointment at their surgery, satisfaction with opening hours, the quality of care received from their GP and practice nurses, amongst other things.
The Department of Health has set some standards for how easy it should be for people to book an appointment with their doctor. The survey measures how well GP surgeries are meeting these standards and therefore helping surgeries and Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) understand where improvements are needed. This survey is an opportunity for patients to have their say about how well their practice is doing at providing these services to patients.
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How were patients selected to take part?
The Department of Health selected names randomly from the NHS list of patients registered with a GP for a minimum of six months. Ipsos MORI keeps these contact details confidential and, once the survey is completed, they are securely destroyed. Ipsos MORI was not provided with any clinical information about patients’ health or consultations.
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How many patients have taken part?
About five and a half million adult patients registered with a GP in England are randomly selected for the 2009/10 survey so roughly one in eight adults are sent a questionnaire to complete. This is split over the four quarters of the GP Patient Survey 2009/10. Each practice has a different number of people selected to take part, depending on a number of factors including the size of the surgery.
For Quarter 1, questionnaires were sent in the first half of April 2009.
For Quarter 2, questionnaires were sent in the first half of July 2009.
For Quarter 3, questionnaires were sent in the first half of October 2009.
For Quarter 4, questionnaires were sent in the first half of January 2010.
Over one million patients returned their completed questionnaire and are included in the combined results for quarters 1, 2 and 3 of the 2009/10 GP Patient Survey.
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When did the survey happen?
For Quarter 1 patients were sent questionnaires in the week commencing 6 April 2009, with reminders sent out in May and June. The closing date for completed surveys was 6 July 2009. Surveys returned after this date were not included in the results.
For Quarter 2 patients were sent questionnaires in the week commencing 6 July 2009, with reminders sent out in August and September. The closing date for completed surveys was 8 October 2009. Surveys returned after this date were not included in the results.
For Quarter 3 patients were sent questionnaires in the week commencing 5 October 2009, with reminders sent out in November and December. The closing date for completed surveys was 7 January 2010. Surveys returned after this date were not included in the results.
For Quarter 4 patients were sent questionnaires in the week commencing 4 January 2010, with reminders sent out in February and March. The closing date for completed surveys was 9 April 2010. Surveys returned after this date were not included in the results.
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Who designed the questionnaire?
The core of this questionnaire was developed by Ipsos MORI in conjunction with the Peninsula Medical School and the National Primary Care Research and Development Centre at the University of Manchester.
Ipsos MORI subjected the questionnaire to a process of cognitive testing to ensure the questions were understood as clearly as possible. A pilot survey was also conducted in October/ November 2008 in order to further test the questionnaire and response process.
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How does the survey comply with requirements for patient confidentiality?
Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) have lawful access to patient details through their legal obligations to maintain registers of patients at each practice. Given that the survey is used to determine patients' experiences of access to their GPs, which in turn determines payment made to practices, there are legitimate purposes for the survey to be conducted.
As there is no disclosure of confidential clinical information involved, there is no breach of confidentiality.
No personal information is accessible through the GPPS results website.
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How is my doctor involved in this survey?
The survey is being conducted as part of the current arrangements for contracts between the Department of Health and GP practices. The questionnaire was sent to a random selection of people who are registered with a GP in England. GP practices were informed about the survey in advance. They will have access to the anonymised, statistical results for their practice, but will not have access to individual answers. No one outside of the Ipsos MORI GP Patient Survey team will know who questionnaires have been sent to or returned by.
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What precautions for data protection/confidentiality have been taken?
Ipsos MORI, the administrators of the survey, strictly adheres to the Market Research Society Code of Conduct and the Data Protection Act, and uses all personal information in a responsible and secure manner. Stringent measures have been taken to ensure personal data is securely stored and seen only by the personnel directly involved in the project. Once the survey is completed, Ipsos MORI will destroy all such data securely.
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Has the survey received ethical approval?
Before starting the first survey in 2007 Ipsos MORI consulted the Central Office for Research Ethics Committee (COREC) and were advised that this survey may not be considered as ‘pure research’ but as ‘service evaluation’ – to evaluate the service provided by GPs to their patients in terms of ease of booking an appointment. Hence this survey does not require formal medical research ethical approval. However, Ipsos MORI strictly adheres to the Market Research Society code of research ethics and patient details are not available to be used for anything other than the purpose of this survey.
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Will practices get a copy of the resulting statistical analysis?
Each practice will have access to its own results via this website – and individual Primary Care Trusts will have access to the results of all the GP practices in their area.
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Where can I learn about the results of my local area/practice?
View the results of specific practices via this page.
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Where can I find survey results from previous years?
The results of the 2007, 2008 and 2009 GP Patient Survey have been published and are available online. To view the results, please click here.
Please note it is not possible to compare all results from previous years due to changes in question wording.
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What is the care planning report? / What is care planning?
The Department of Health has stated that every person with a long term medical condition should be offered a personalised care plan, developed, agreed and regularly reviewed with a named health professional. The survey aims to find out about qualitative aspects of care planning for these patients.
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What is weighting? Why do you weight the data?
Weighting adjusts the data to account for potential age and gender differences between the profile of all eligible patients in a practice and the patients who actually complete a questionnaire: for example, if there are more 18-24 year olds registered with a GP surgery compared to the number of 75-84 year olds, we would expect to receive more questionnaires from the 18-24 year olds. But we know from previous results that we usually receive more questionnaires from 75-84 year olds. We also know that younger and older people have very different views of their GP and very different experiences of visiting their GP surgery, so this difference will have an impact on the overall results. Using this example, if 5% of returned questionnaires are from 18-24 year olds, but we know that this group makes up 10% of the eligible practice population (patients over 18 registered with a GP in England), then we can ‘weight’ the responses to reflect this. By applying weights, the results for a practice will more accurately reflect the views of the practice population.
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Why have you only weighted for age and gender and not ethnicity?
In order to apply weights, the actual profile of the practice has to be known. The data collected from NHAIS contains age and gender of registered patients; it does not contain any information about ethnicity.
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I've seen cases where the 'total number of responses' for a question is larger than the total number of completed questionnaires received. Why is this?
This can happen when you apply large weights to the data. If, for example, we have a very large practice where half of the patients are young men and half are young women but only 5% of the young men return a questionnaire, we would have to apply a very large weight to the responses from each young man to make the profile of patients who completed a questionnaire match the profile of the practice. In such cases, the responses we have received are 'up-weighted' to such an extent that the 'weighted' number of responses exceeds the 'actual' number of responses.
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I've seen cases where, when adding up the number of people who have selected each different response for a question, the total does not match the figure in the 'total number of responses' column. Why is this?
This can happen when weighted data is rounded to a whole number.
When weights are applied, decimals are added to the number of responses in each category and the total number of responses. This means that, occasionally there can be cases where the number of responses differs from the base size. For example, if a report says that 59 people say ‘yes’ and 14 say ‘no’, but the number of responses is 74 (not 73), that means that the weighted values are actually 59.345 and 14.456, which add up to 73.801, (which is then rounded up to 74).
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There are some cases where the responses for a question are not showing, and instead there is a "~" symbol. Why?
In cases where fewer than 10 people have answered the question, the data has been suppressed. This is to prevent individuals and their responses being identifiable in the data.
In the weighted reports, there are some cases where this suppression is also applied to questions where the total number of responses is 10. This is again due to rounding. If the total number of responses when weighted is less than 10 (e.g. 9.856), but has been rounded to 10 in the report, then the data will be suppressed. If the weighted total number of responses is, for example, 10.245, then the total number of responses will also show as 10 but the responses will be shown.
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There are cases where, for example, when adding the % of 'very easy' and 'easy', the total does not match what you would get if you were to add the percentages manually. Why is this?
This is again due to rounding the weighted totals to whole numbers.
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I have noticed cases where the results seem to show that nobody answering gave a particular response to a question, but the percentage which relates to that response shows as *% (indicating it is less than 0.5% but more than 0%). Can you explain why this is?
This is because, in the unweighted data, there may be a single person who has given a response. However, when weighted, this response has been given a value of greater than zero but less than 0.5 and, therefore, rounded to 0. Because the actual value is still greater than zero, in percentage terms this shows as *%.
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I have seen cases where the same numbers of responses are given to two different answer categories, but the percentage values are different. Why?
There are examples in the reports where, for example, it looks like one person has selected 'Other' and one person selected 'I would prefer not to say', but their corresponding percentages are 1% and 2%. Again, this happens when the results and number of responses are rounded but the percentages are calculated on un-rounded data.
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Will the Department of Health pay practices on the basis of weighted data?
No - only unweighted responses are used for payment purposes. This is because NHS Employers and the GPC agreed that the QOF payment should only be based on the views of the patients who actually responded to the survey.
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