AN ANALYSIS OF THE VALIDITY OF DETAILED OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE HISTORIES USING A COHORT OF PCB-EXPOSED WORKERS.
Item
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Title
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AN ANALYSIS OF THE VALIDITY OF DETAILED OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE HISTORIES USING A COHORT OF PCB-EXPOSED WORKERS.
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Identifier
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AAI8401954
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identifier
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8401954
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Creator
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ROSENBERG, CARL ROBERT.
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Contributor
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Dr. Michael N. Mulvihill | Dr. Alf Fischbein
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Date
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1983
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Health Sciences, Public Health
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Abstract
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A study was undertaken to describe and analyze the validity of self-reported occupational histories obtained from a group of 288 blue-collar workers who had participated in a repeated survey concerning PCB exposure and the prevalence of related health effects at two capacitor-manufacturing plants.;Crude validity was operationally defined as the percent agreement between a worker's self-reported occupational history and an unbiased company record of employment. This score was used in a descriptive phase of the study which was concerned with how inaccuracies in self-reporting were reflective of misclassifications in terms of exposure to PCBs.;In the analytical phase of the study, various independent factors which might influence validity were investigated. Multivariate analysis was employed to examine the effects and interactions of such factors--looking at each factor while adjusting for the effects of all the others.;The results indicated considerable variability in crude validity scores. Misclassification of exposure, produced by the above, could lead to either non-detection of a risk factor or spurious associations in case-control and survey type epidemiologic studies. Validity was significantly influenced by diversity of the job categorical pattern, recall ability, sex, duration of employment, time elapsed between work history events and their subsequent recording, and interviewer objectivity. Many of these factor effects were of an interactive nature. Knowledge of these factor effects would be critical either in planning epidemiologic studies safeguarded against inaccuracies or in determining the efficacy of performing such studies in the first place.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Biomedical Sciences
