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Evaluating recall bias in a case‐crossover design estimating risk of injury related to alcohol: Data from six countries
Author(s) -
Ye Yu,
Bond Jason C.,
Cherpitel Cheryl J.,
Borges Guilherme,
Monteiro Maristela,
Vallance Kate
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
drug and alcohol review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.018
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1465-3362
pISSN - 0959-5236
DOI - 10.1111/dar.12042
Subject(s) - crossover study , recall , yesterday , recall bias , alcohol consumption , medicine , statistics , injury prevention , poison control , psychology , demography , environmental health , alcohol , social psychology , mathematics , biochemistry , chemistry , alternative medicine , pathology , sociology , cognitive psychology , placebo , physics , astronomy
and Aims Prior work suggests that recall bias may be a threat to the validity of relative risk estimation of injury due to alcohol consumption, when the case‐crossover method is used based on drinking during the same six hours period the week prior to injury as the control period. This work explores the issue of alcohol recall bias used in the case‐crossover design. Design and Methods Data were collected on injury patients from emergency room studies across six countries ( D ominican R epublic, G uatemala, G uyana, N icaragua, P anama and C anada), conducted in 2009–2011, each with n ≈ 500 except C anada ( n = 249). Recall bias was evaluated comparing drinking during two control periods: the same six hours period the day before versus the week before injury. Results A greater likelihood of drinking yesterday compared with last week was seen using data from the D ominican R epublic, while lower likelihood of drinking yesterday was found in G uatemala and N icaragua. When the data from all six countries were combined, no differential drinking between the two control periods was observed. Discussion and Conclusions These findings are in contrast to earlier studies showing a downward recall bias of drinking, and suggest that it may be premature to dismiss the last week case‐crossover method as a valid approach to estimating risk of injury related to drinking. However, the heterogeneity across countries suggests that there may be some unexplained measurement error beyond random sampling error. [ Y e Y , B ond JC , C herpitel CJ , B orges G , M onteiro M , V allance K . Evaluating recall bias in a case‐crossover design estimating risk of injury related to alcohol: Data from six countries. Drug Alcohol Rev 2013;32:512–518]