Self-directed Dying in the Netherlands

The frequency of both types of self-directed deaths in the population can be estimated with the standard weighting method that is used by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) in estimating the annual frequency of relatively rare events such as traffic incidents. The investigators will use an adapted standard weighting. Each informant is weighted by the inverse of 1 (the informant) plus the number of other individuals who had been confided by the deceased person about their intention to hasten death by VSED or ILMC. The estimated number of cases will be computed for the responding part of the sample. For the frequency estimation, the investigators will use the number of informants on a death by VSED or ILMC in the five years from 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2022, because reports about cases before 2018 are considered less reliable. The annual frequency of VSED and ILMC can then be computed as the estimated proportion of reported cases in the sample (i.e. weighted sum of informants on VSED deaths and ILMC deaths respectively divided by sample size corrected for non-response), multiplied by the total number of Dutch adults minus non-western adults (underrepresented in the sample) and divided by the five years covered by the informants. The Poisson distribution will be used in calculating the 95% Confidence Intervals (CIs). Secondary outcomes will be mainly described in frequency tables, using standard statistical analysis. The interview transcripts will be analysed thematically using NVivo software.