title: Reconstructing past occupational exposures: how reliable are women's reports of their partner's occupation?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Most of the evidence on agreement between self- and proxy-reported occupational data comes from interview-based studies. The authors aimed to examine agreement between women's reports of their partner's occupation and their partner's own description using questionnaire-based data collected as a part of the prospective, population-based Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.
  
  
  METHODS
  Information on present occupation was self-reported by women's partners and proxy-reported by women through questionnaires administered at 8 and 21 months after the birth of a child. Job titles were coded to the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC2000) using software developed by the University of Warwick (Computer-Assisted Structured Coding Tool). The accuracy of proxy-report was expressed as percentage agreement and kappa coefficients for four-, three- and two-digit SOC2000 codes obtained in automatic and semiautomatic (manually improved) coding modes. Data from 6016 couples at 8 months and 5232 couples at 21 months postnatally were included in the analyses.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The agreement between men's self-reported occupation and women's report of their partner's occupation in fully automatic coding mode at four-, three- and two-digit code level was 65%, 71% and 77% at 8 months and 68%, 73% and 76% at 21 months. The accuracy of agreement was slightly improved by semiautomatic coding of occupations: 73%/73%, 78%/77% and 83%/80% at 8/21 months respectively. While this suggests that women's description of their partners' occupation can be used as a valuable tool in epidemiological research where data from partners are not available, this study revealed no agreement between these young women and their partners at the two-digit level of SOC2000 coding in approximately one in five cases.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Proxy reporting of occupation introduces a statistically significant degree of error in classification. The effects of occupational misclassification by proxy reporting in retrospective occupational epidemiological studies based on questionnaire data should be considered.
authors.affiliation: Child Health, Royal Aberdeen Children's Hospital, University of Aberdeen, Westburn Road, Aberdeen AB25 2ZP, UK. n.tagiyeva-milne@abdn.ac.uk
authors.forename: Nara
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Tagiyeva
authors.forename: Sean
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Semple
authors.forename: Graham
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Devereux
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sherriff
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Henderson
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Elias
authors.forename: Jon G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Ayres
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004522:Educational Status; D004739:England; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017533:Marital Status; D011939:Mental Recall; D016273:Occupational Exposure / Q000032:analysis*; D009790:Occupations / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019727:Proxy; D012650:Self Disclosure; D012923:Social Class; D018454:Spouses / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult