title: Reliability of information on cigarette smoking and beverage consumption provided by hospital controls.
abstract: We compared data from interviews of patients admitted to hospital and interviews repeated at home for 400 hospital controls. Of these, 294 (73.5%) could be re-interviewed (responders). Never smoking was reported by 44% of subjects in the in-hospital interviews and by 40% in the repeat at-home interviews. Among those interviewed in hospital, 38% claimed to be nondrinkers, as did 38% of responders, but only 28% characterized themselves as nondrinkers in the repeat interview. For consumption of regular coffee, 15% reported none in the selected sample, 14% among responders, but only 6% in the repeat at-home interview. Agreement was good for decaffeinated coffee and tea consumption.
authors.affiliation: Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: D' Avanzo
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: La Vecchia
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Katsouyanni
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Negri
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Trichopoulos
mesh_terms: D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000453:epidemiology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003069:Coffee; D003625:Data Collection; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006115:Greece / Q000453:epidemiology; D006760:Hospitalization / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012907:Smoking / Q000453:epidemiology*; D013662:Tea
chemical_list: D003069:Coffee; D013662:Tea