Authors:
Peters S, Glass DC, Milne E, Fritschi L
Authors notes:
Occupational and Environmental Medicine. 2013;Online:1-5
Keywords:
Questionnaire, exposure, rule-based assessment, case-by-case expert assessment
Abstract:
Retrospective exposure assessment in community-based studies is largely reliant on questionnaire information.
Expert assessment is often used to assess lifetime occupational exposures, but these assessments generally lack transparency and are very time-consuming.
We explored the agreement between a rule-based assessment approach and case-by-case expert assessment of occupational exposures in a community-based study.
Exposures were assigned to 5829 jobs among 1079 men and 6189 jobs among 1234 women.
For both sexes, agreement was good for the two assessment methods of exposure to diesel exhaust at a job level and at a person level.
The agreement was good to excellent for pesticide exposure among men and women.
Moderate to good agreement was observed for assessment of solvent exposure, which was better for women than men.
The rule-based assessment approach appeared to be an efficient alternative for assigning occupational exposures in a community-based study for a selection of occupational exposures.