The data reported on here were collected as part of a larger research project investigating community interpreting and intercultural mediation in public institutions in Geneva and Basel. It is one of the 35 projects supported by National Research GSK2126458 order Programme 51 on social integration and social exclusion.15 We developed a self-administered questionnaire. The questions were pretested in both Geneva and Basel, but were not validated. The questionnaire was mailed to all head doctors and all head nurses of each of the 70 clinical services in 11

clinical departments, as well as to all 11 department heads (total = 151). In a cover letter explaining the purpose of the study, these individuals were asked to either answer the questionnaire themselves or to ask a colleague

of the same profession in their service to answer it. Only one mailing was conducted due to time constraints, but a 66% response rate was considered good compared to other surveys of health personnel. Data collection was carried out between March and November 2004. No reminders were sent. The questionnaire asked about respondents’ sociodemographic and professional characteristics, characteristics of the clinical service in which they worked, their use of different linguistic assistance strategies in their current clinical service, perceptions of the quality of interpretation provided by different types of interpreters, and their opinions regarding the impact of interpreter services on their work and on immigrant patients’ integration into Swiss society (see Table 1 for a description of survey questions Obeticholic Acid molecular weight and response categories). In our study, the term “non-Swiss

patients” refers to any category of foreigner (immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, foreign workers, etc.) living in Switzerland but without a Swiss passport. We use the term “professional interpreter” to refer to agency interpreters (the primary source of professional interpreters Orotidine 5′-phosphate decarboxylase in Switzerland), as contrasted with ad hoc interpreters. However, it is important to note that there are no standardized requirements for agency interpreters and their training and experience vary widely both between and within interpreter agencies. Finally, we defined three categories of ad hoc interpreters: bilingual employees, untrained volunteer interpreters, and patients’ relatives or friends. Respondents were asked to indicate which categories of interpreters they used for each of a list of patients’ primary language spoken at home. Since some respondents chose more than one option for a single language, and not all responded for all languages, the total Ns for each language vary (Table 2). Descriptive analyses (frequency distributions and cross-tabulations) including nonparametric chi-square tests were carried out using SPSS 14.0. Ninety-nine questionnaires were completed and returned, representing a 66% response rate.