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Smoke or fog? The usefulness of retrospectively reported information about smoking
Donald Kenkel1, Dean R Lillard, Alan Mathios
1Department of Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-4401, USA. dsk10@cornell.edu
Aims:
To investigate the reliability and validity of retrospectively reported information on smoking.
Design:
Nationally representative retrospective data from longitudinal surveys and contemporaneous data from repeated cross-sectional surveys were used.
Participants:
Adult respondents to three of the four samples of the National Longitudinal Surveys Original Cohort 1966-68; the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979; and various waves of the US National Health Interview Survey.
Measurements:
Reliability was investigated by calculating kappa statistics for repeated measures of ever-smoking and annual-smoking status. Validity was investigated by comparing smoking prevalence rates generated by retrospective data with contemporaneously measured rates.
Findings:
Kappa statistics indicated the repeated measures of ever-smoking status show substantial agreement; repeated measures of annual-smoking status show moderate agreement. Retrospective reports on smoking behavior produced prevalence rates that match reasonably well with those from contemporaneous reports of smoking behavior.
Conclusions:
Retrospective data on smoking can be an important resource for tobacco addiction research.
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