Physician practice profiles for CME: four investigations into sampling methods.

Sampling physicians' patient contacts to produce a practice profile forms the basis of three present individualized CME programs. The practical and statistical adequacy of these sampling procedures was examined and found to be seriously lacking. Samples were compared to a 6-month continuously coded data base on 16 family physicians. Following analysis of the 6-month data base for significant sources of variance, two new sampling procedures were proposed and tested against a 12-month continuously coded data base. Results indicate both practical acceptability and adequate representation by these two sampling procedures.