@article {6534, title = {Effect of recall period on the reporting of occupational injuries among older workers in the Health and Retirement Study.}, journal = {Am J Ind Med}, volume = {28}, year = {1995}, month = {1995 Nov}, pages = {583-90}, publisher = {28}, 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.

}, keywords = {Accidents, Occupational, Adult, Aged, Bias, Cross-Sectional Studies, Data collection, Female, Humans, Incidence, Linear Models, Male, Mental Recall, Middle Aged, Models, Statistical, Reproducibility of Results, Retirement, Risk Factors, Time Factors, United States}, issn = {0271-3586}, doi = {10.1002/ajim.4700280503}, author = {Zwerling, Craig and Nancy L. Sprince and Robert B Wallace and Charles S. Davis and Paul S. Whitten and Steven G Heeringa} }