Open AccessData on Prior Pesticide Use Collected from Self-and Proxy Respondents
Author(s) -
Rebecca A. Johnson,
Jack S. Mandel,
Robert W. Gibson,
Jeffrey H. Mandel,
Alan P. Bender,
Paul Gunderson,
Colleen M. Renier
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
epidemiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.901
H-Index - 173
eISSN - 1531-5487
pISSN - 1044-3983
DOI - 10.1097/00001648-199303000-00012
Subject(s) - proxy (statistics) , respondent , environmental health , pesticide , demography , odds , statistics , medicine , psychology , toxicology , logistic regression , mathematics , biology , agronomy , sociology , political science , law
Proxy respondents have often been used in case-control studies of cancer and pesticides. To evaluate the effect of exposure misclassification, we compared data collected during 1981-1983 from participants interviewed for a case-control study of leukemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma with data collected during 1990-1991 from proxy respondents for participants who died or became incompetent since the initial interview (328 self-proxy pairs). As questions increased in detail, agreement percentages decreased. Agreement percentages were highest for demographic and general farming information (averages = 88-90%) and lowest for specific pesticide use (averages = 68-74%). Generally, odds ratios calculated from proxy respondent data were less than those from self-respondent data; however, several exceptions occurred. The findings indicate that pesticide data provided by proxy respondents will not necessarily result in the same estimate of risk and/or lead to the same conclusions as data provided by self-respondents.