This study provides only limited support for the suggested association between risk of renal cell carcinoma and use of diuretics and analgesics. The coexistence of renal cell carcinoma and cardiovascular diseases could be caused by risk factors that are common to these conditions.
This article summarizes the findings of an experiment to evaluate the effect of "Don't Know" (DK) boxes in a mail questionnaire consisting of factual questions. In a split-panel test, half of the respondents received a questionnaire with DK boxes and the other half received a questionnaire without DK boxes. The overall response rates were the same for the two versions. The questionnaire version without DK boxes obtained an appreciably higher rate of substantive responses for many items. However, there were few large substantive changes in response distributions between the two versions, and there was no appreciable difference in the response error rates.In the development of each question in a survey questionnaire, the survey designer must decide, in addition to question wording, what response categories are most appropriate. Usually, closed response categories are preferred to facilitate coding and analysis.
A comparison was made of the occupational data reported on the death certificates of 586 men with their employment history obtained by interviews. Agreement was assessed for 19 occupational and 14 industrial categories of usual employment, with the highest levels of concordance (greater than or equal to 80%) found for agricultural, medical, and public administration activities. Between the two sources of information, there was overall agreement of 56% for usual occupation and 51% for usual industry of employment. Concordance was highest among the 68 self-respondents (usual occupation 66%; usual industry 53%). Among the 518 surrogates, spousal agreement was highest (58% for occupation and 51% for industry). For other surrogate types, agreement was 49% for both industry and occupation. Agreement varied by duration of employment and by level of education, with concordance tending to increase as length of employment and educational attainment rose. These relationships remained when examined by respondent type. Evaluation of agreement levels by age and other study subject characteristics showed little effect on concordance. Review of verbatim data from the interviews and death certificates revealed that most disagreements could be attributed to coding problems caused by vague or misleading information on the death certificates, although some disconcordance was due to uncodable and missing information in the interview history. Based on results from this and prior studies, the value of occupational data derived from death certificates in epidemiologic studies may be limited, although the addition of explicit instructions on the death certificate itself may aid in providing more useful and complete information for usual employment.
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