The journey of incontinent women from community to university clinic; implications for selection bias, gatekeeper function, and primary care

The selection process of patients from community to hospitals may introduce bias into research and hamper the generalization of hospital-based research back to general practice. The objective of this study was to use female urinary incontinence as a model in an attempt to provide empirical support for selection bias. The analyses are based on three populations of incontinent women: community level (epidemiological survey, 535 women), primary...