Socio-economic Realities in a Rural Filipino Community Lead to Volunteer Bias in a Survey of Diabetes, Prediabetes and Metabolic Syndrome

Abstract

A survey was done to determine the prevalence of diabetes, prediabetes and metabolic syndrome in the rural town of San Juan, Batangas in the Philippines since there is limited data on these conditions in the rural areas of the country. However, volunteer bias has hampered the accurate determination of the true prevalence of these conditions despite our best efforts at ensuring random selection of participants. Presented here is a real world example showing how socio-economic realities in the community make volunteer bias difficult to avoid in a rural resource-limited area.

Keywords

• Volunteer bias
• prevalence survey
• diabetes
• prediabetes
• metabolic syndrome
• rural community