Helmholtz Gemeinschaft

Search
Browse
Statistics
Feeds

The baseline examinations of the German National Cohort (NAKO): recruitment protocol, response, and weighting

[thumbnail of Original Article]
Preview
PDF (Original Article) - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader
1MB
[thumbnail of Supplementary Material] MS Word (Supplementary Material)
642kB

Item Type:Article
Title:The baseline examinations of the German National Cohort (NAKO): recruitment protocol, response, and weighting
Creators Name:Rach, S., Sand, M., Reineke, A., Becher, H., Greiser, K.H., Wolf, K., Wirkner, K., Schmidt, C.O., Schipf, S., Jöckel, K.H., Krist, L., Ahrens, W., Brenner, H., Castell, S., Gastell, S., Harth, V., Holleczek, B., Ittermann, T., Janisch-Fabian, S., Karch, A., Keil, T., Klett-Tammen, C.J., Kluttig, A., Kuß, O., Leitzmann, M., Lieb, W., Meinke-Franze, C., Michels, K.B., Mikolajczyk, R., Moreno Velásquez, I., Obi, N., Övermöhle, C., Peters, A., Pischon, T., Rospleszcz, S., Schmidt, B., Schulze, M.B., Stang, A., Teismann, H., Töpfer, C., Wolff, R. and Günther, K.
Abstract:The German National Cohort (NAKO) is the largest population-based epidemiologic cohort study in Germany and investigates the causes of the most common chronic diseases. Between 2014 and 2019, a total of 1.3 million residents aged 20–69 years from 16 German regions were randomly selected from the general population and invited to participate following a highly standardized recruitment protocol. The overall response was 15.6% and differed considerably across study centers (7.6–30.7%). Females were more likely to participate than males (17.5% vs. 14.1%) and participation increased with age (10.2% in age group “ < 29 years” up to 20.7% in age group “ > 60 years”). Across all study regions, response was highest in rural areas (22.3%), followed by towns and suburbs (17.2%), and was lowest in cities (14.5%). Compared with the general population in the respective study regions, participants with low and medium education are underrepresented in the NAKO sample, while highly educated participants are overrepresented. Participants with non-German nationality and with a migration background are also underrepresented. Participants living in single households are underrepresented, while participants from larger households (2 or more persons) are overrepresented compared to the general population. Survey weights are made available to researchers along with the study data that account for the sampling design and adjust for differences in the distribution of age, sex, nationality (German vs. non-German), migration status, education, and household size.
Keywords:Population-Based, Cohort Studies, Epidemiology, Response, Nonresponse, Participation, Sample design, Survey Weights, Correction Weights
Source:European Journal of Epidemiology
ISSN:0393-2990
Publisher:Springer
Date:22 April 2025
Official Publication:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-025-01219-8
PubMed:View item in PubMed

Repository Staff Only: item control page

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Open Access
MDC Library