TY  - JOUR
PY  - 1995//
TI  - Effect of recall period on the reporting of occupational injuries among older workers in the Health and Retirement Study
JO  - American journal of industrial medicine
A1  - Zwerling, Craig S.
A1  - Sprince, N. L.
A1  - Wallace, R. B.
A1  - Davis, C. S.
A1  - Whitten, P. S.
A1  - Heeringa, S. G.
SP  - 583
EP  - 590
VL  - 28
IS  - 5
N2  - 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.
LA  - 
SN  - 0271-3586
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/
ID  - ref1
ER  -