Semi-structured interviews were conducted with parents who
had recently consulted primary care because their child had an RTI.
Six GP practices were purposively selected to obtain practices with
populations from a range of socio-economic situations (SES) and
from both rural and urban areas. Practices were assigned to 1 of 5
SES categories using the practice level indices of multiple
deprivation (IMD) scores [25] so that practices with an IMD score
which put them in the most deprived quintile were in category 1
and practices in the most affluent quintile were in category 5. Two
practices were recruited from SES category 1 and one practice each
from the other categories. Eligible parents for the interviews were
identified through a search of patient records for recent child
consultations for RTI. Letters were sent out to 60 parents from each
practice. Where more than 60 eligible children were identified, an
additional search was conducted to find the number of consultations
for that child in the past year and 30 of the most frequent
consulters and 30 of the least frequent consulters were selected.
The SES of participating parents was categorized using the IMD
score for their home postcode to assign each to the corresponding
SES category. Parents from the lowest SES category were underrepresented
in the sample recruited through practices and to
increase the socio-economic diversity of participants additional
parents were recruited through local parent groups.