title: Effect of recall period on the reporting of occupational injuries among older workers in the Health and Retirement Study.
abstract: Studies of injury morbidity often rely on self-reported survey data. In designing these surveys, researchers must chose between a shorter recall period to minimize recall bias and a longer period to maximize the precision of rate estimates. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, which employed a recall period of 1 year, we examined the effect of the recall period on rates of occupational injuries among older workers as well as upon rate ratios of these injuries for nine risk factors. We fit a stochastic model to the occupational injury rates as a function of time before the interview and used this model to estimate what the injury rates would have been had we used a 4-week recall period. The adjusted occupational injury rate of 5.9 injuries per 100 workers per year was 36% higher than the rate based on a 1-year recall period. Adjustment for recall period had much less effect on rate ratios, which typically varied by < 10%. Our work suggests that self-reported surveys with longer recall periods may be used to estimate occupational injury rates and also may be useful in studying the associations between occupational injuries and a variety of risk factors.
authors.affiliation: University of Iowa, Iowa City 52242, USA.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zwerling
authors.forename: N L
authors.initials: NL
authors.lastname: Sprince
authors.forename: R B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Wallace
authors.forename: C S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Davis
authors.forename: P S
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: Whitten
authors.forename: S G
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Heeringa
mesh_terms: D000062:Accidents, Occupational / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D015982:Bias; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D015233:Models, Statistical; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012179:Retirement; D012307:Risk Factors; D013997:Time Factors; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology