Reliability of demographic, smoking and occupational data provided by mothers vs. fathers in a childhood cancer study.
A large case-control study of children was used to test mothers' reporting of information on fathers' background, lifestyle and occupational factors. For a subset (104) of 1341 enrolled families, both parents were interviewed about fathers' characteristics. Reliability of reporting was determined for fathers' race, education, smoking status, non-recent job history and use of occupational agents. The ability of mothers to report fathers' race, education and smoking status was high (kappa > 0.70). Mothers were generally able to report jobs held by the fathers in the 5 years preceding the birth of the child, but reliability was higher for jobs held for longer (kappa typically above 0.70), rather than shorter periods (kappa above 0.40). The finding that mothers' reporting on fathers' background, lifestyle and non-recent job history was reliable is encouraging, because many studies on childhood health rely exclusively on information from interviews with mothers. However, mothers were not reliably able to describe exposure to specific occupational agents.
McKean-Cowdin
R
R
Department of Preventive Medicine, University of Southern California, Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, Los Angeles 90033-0800, USA. mckeanco@hsc.usc.edu
Preston-Martin
S
S
Pogoda
J M
JM
Mueller
B A
BA
Holly
E A
EA
D002140:California / Q000453:epidemiology; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D003625:Data Collection / Q000592:standards*; D003710:Demography; D005192:Family Health; D005220:Fathers / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009035:Mothers; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology*; D016273:Occupational Exposure / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012907:Smoking / Q000453:epidemiology*; D014861:Washington / Q000453:epidemiology