Abstract
This review study presents the methods used for assessing patient satisfaction with care provided by general practitioners. Firstly the study describes the principles of quantitative methods and also introduced the 10 most commonly used international questionnaires in this respect.
In the second part, the review deals with qualitative methods (interviews, focus group discussions, recording interviews with patients, transcripts, text analysis, computer analysis of videotapes) and includes examples of mixed methods. The author in the third part summarizes the disadvantages of traditional questionnaires and offers several solutions.
The final section of the article focuses on practical issues: time frame of study, ways of administering questionnaires, size of patient sample, length of questionnaire etc.