The representativeness of a European multi-center network for influenza-like-illness participatory surveillance

• Author(s): Cantarelli, Pietro ; Debin, Marion ; Turbelin, Clément ; Poletto, Chiara ; Blanchon, Thierry ; Falchi, Alessandra ; Hanslik, Thomas ; Bonmarin, Isabelle ; Levy-Bruhl, Daniel ; Micheletti, Alessandra ; Paolotti, Daniela ; Vespignani, Alessandro ; Edmunds, John ; Eames, Ken ; Smallenburg, Ronald ; Koppeschaar, Carl ; Franco, Ana O ; Faustino, Vitor ; Carnahan, AnnaSara ; Rehn, Moa ; Colizza, Vittoria
• Date: 2014
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.7/324
• Origin: ARCA - Access to Research and Communication Annals
• Subject(s): Influenza; Surveillance; Representativeness; Internet data collection; Participation bias; Selection bias
• Document Type: Journal article
• Language: English
• Contributor(s): ARCA

Description

The Internet is becoming more commonly used as a tool for disease surveillance. Similarly to other surveillance systems and to studies using online data collection, Internet-based surveillance will have biases in participation, affecting the generalizability of the results. Here we quantify the participation biases of Influenzanet, an ongoing European-wide network of Internet-based participatory surveillance systems for influenza-like-illness.