Reconstructing past occupational exposures: How reliable are women's reports of their partner's occupation?

Citation

Tagiyeva N, Semple S, Devereux G, Sherriff A, Henderson J, Elias P & Ayres JG (2011) Reconstructing past occupational exposures: How reliable are women's reports of their partner's occupation?. Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 68 (6), pp. 452-456. https://doi.org/10.1136/oem.2009.052506

Abstract
Objectives: 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-, threeand 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. Conclusion: 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.

Journal
Occupational and Environmental Medicine: Volume 68, Issue 6