The validity and reliability of parent’s recall for routine Immunization in Cameroon: an evaluative study

Abstract

Introduction: Parent’s recall is one of the frequently used sources for information on children immunization history. During the 2018 demograhpic and health survey in Cameroon, parent’s recall was the only source of information for 47% of chidren assessed for immunization coverage. The objective of this study was to determine the validity of parent’s recall for immunization compared with the vaccination card as the gold standard in Yaounde-Cameroon. Methods: A household-based survey was conducted targeting parents of children aged 0-59months who had their children’s vaccination cards. The immunization history of each child was taken based on both parent’s recall and vaccination card. Using the vaccination card as a gold standard, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of parent’s recall were calculated with their corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI). The degree of agreement and the kappa statistics between the two methods were calculated using R version 4.1.0 (2021-05-18). Findings: When combined for all vaccines, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of parent’s recall were 63%, 60%, 90%, and 23% respectively. Parent’s recall validity and reliability was observed to vary across vaccines. Conclusion: Our conclusion is that validity and reliability of parent’s recall vary a lot across different vaccines and parents recall is not very reliable for immunization status in children. It can be used as the last resort.