MII Implementation Guide Soziodemographie - Downloaded Version 2027.0.0-ballot See the Directory of published versions

Guidance for Researchers

Description of scenarios application

Collection for Patient-Centered Care Planning

Upon admission to an inpatient facility, sociodemographic information is collected as part of the social history. Collection can be complete or partial, depending on the care context and the time available.

For example, current living situation, household size, care/support situation, educational attainment, and employment status are documented. The date of collection and the collection method are stored together with the recorded characteristics.

This information supports patient-centered care planning and can be helpful in organizing discharge, outpatient follow-up care, nursing care, rehabilitation, and social support.

Use in a Clinical Study or Cohort

In a clinical study, sociodemographic characteristics are collected at study enrollment and linked to study progress, participation, study dropouts, and outcomes.

This information can be used to:

• describe the composition of the study population;
• assess the representativeness of the enrolled individuals;
• examine differences in recruitment and participation;
• compare outcomes between sociodemographic groups;
• account for possible confounders and effect modifiers in the analysis.

Clinical studies may include sociodemographically selected populations, which can limit the transferability of results to other patient groups.

Examination of Equity in Care

A research group investigates whether certain patient groups have differing access to diagnostics, therapy, rehabilitation, or follow-up care.

For this purpose, sociodemographic characteristics are linked with care data. The analysis can be conducted, for example, by income, employment status, place of residence, care/support situation, or educational attainment.

The module enables an empirical investigation of differences in care, rather than relying exclusively on aggregated estimates or estimates drawn from other locations.

Differences in socioeconomic and geographic factors can, for example, influence referral to and participation in early-phase clinical trials, and can thus also affect the international transferability of study results.