Dataset Information

Reliability and Validity of a Life Course Passive Smoke Exposure Questionnaire in an Australian Cohort From Childhood to Adulthood.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

Life course exposure to passive smoke may predict health, but there are few validated measures. We tested the reliability and validity of a retrospective life course passive smoking questionnaire.

Methods

Participants from the third follow-up of the Childhood Determinants of Adult Health study (2014-2019, ages 36-49 years) retrospectively reported mother/father/other household member smoking when living at home during childhood, including duration (years) and smoking location (never/sometimes/always inside house). The severity of exposure index (SEI; sum of mother/father/other years smoked multiplied by smoking location), cumulative years of exposure (CYE; sum of mother/father/other years), and total household smokers (THS) were derived. The reliability of retrospective passive smoking reports was examined with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) using household smoking reported 34 years earlier in 1985 by participants when aged 7-15 years. Construct validity was examined by correlating retrospective passive smoking with participants' smoking in adulthood and lung function in childhood and adulthood.

Results

Among 2082 participants (mean±standard deviation [SD], 45.0±2.5 years; 55.2% females), THS ranged from 0 to 5 (mean± SD, 0.9±1.0), CYE ranged from 0 to 106 (mean±SD, 10.5±13.9), and SEI ranged from 0 to 318 (mean±SD, 24.4±36.0). Retrospective measures showed moderate agreement with total household smokers reported in childhood (ICC, 0.58 to 0.62). The retrospective measures were weakly but significantly (p<0.05) correlated with participants' smoking (r=0.13 to 0.15) and lung function (r= -0.05 to -0.06).

Conclusions

The retrospective passive smoking questionnaire showed reasonable reliability and validity. This measure may be useful for epidemiological studies.

SUBMITTER: Ezegbe C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8046600 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundIn epidemiologic studies that rely on professional judgment to assess occupational exposures, the raters' accurate assessment is vital to detect associations. We examined the influence of the type of questionnaire, type of industry, and type of rater on the raters' ability to reliably and validly assess within-industry differences in exposure. Our aim was to identify areas where improvements in exposure assessment may be possible.MethodsSubjects from three foundries (n = 72) and three textile plants (n = 74) in Shanghai, China, completed an occupational history (OH) and an industry-specific questionnaire (IQ). Six total dust measurements were collected per subject and were used to calculate a subject-specific measurement mean, which was used as the gold standard. Six raters independently ranked the intensity of each subject's current job on an ordinal scale (1-4) based on the OH alone and on the OH and IQ together. Aggregate ratings were calculated for the group, for industrial hygienists, and for occupational physicians. We calculated intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) to evaluate the reliability of the raters. We calculated the correlation between the subject-specific measurement means and the ratings to evaluate the raters' validity. Analyses were stratified by industry, type of questionnaire, and type of rater. We also examined the agreement between the ratings by exposure category, where the subject-specific measurement means were categorized into two and four categories.ResultsThe reliability and validity measures were higher for the aggregate ratings than for the ratings from the individual raters. The group's performance was maximized with three raters. Both the reliability and validity measures were higher for the foundry industry than for the textile industry. The ICCs were consistently lower in the OH/IQ round than in the OH round in both industries. In contrast, the correlations with the measurement means were higher in the OH/IQ round than in the OH round for the foundry industry (group rating, OH/IQ: Spearman rho = 0.77; OH: rho = 0.64). No pattern by questionnaire type was observed for the textile industry (group rating, Spearman rho = 0.50, both assessment rounds). For both industries, the agreement by exposure category was higher when the task was reduced to discriminating between two versus four exposure categories.ConclusionsAssessments based on professional judgment may reduce misclassification by using two or three raters, by using questionnaires that systematically collect task information, and by defining intensity categories that are distinguishable by the raters. However, few studies have the resources to use multiple raters and these additional efforts may not be adequate for obtaining valid subjective ratings. Thus, improving exposure assessment approaches for studies that rely on professional judgment remain an important research need.