Principles of Exposure Measurement in Epidemiology
Principles of Exposure Measurement in Epidemiology
复制标题
流行病学中的暴露测量原理
DOI：
10.1136/oem.51.11.790
复制
发表时间：
1994
影响因子：
4.9
通讯作者：
Re Waller
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Re Waller
The main intended target for this book, as stated by the authors, is graduate students in epidemiology. The material is drawn largely from a course at the University of Washington, Seattle. Thus there is a tendency to relate to circumstances and examples in the United States, although with an international spread of authorship general application, at least across industrially developed countries, is assured. It is indeed a substantial textbook covering most of epidemiology as applied to occupational health and general population studies, not just exposure measurement. This is in fact interpreted very broadly, and deals with the classification of attributes such as occupa-tional history, job type, smoking habits, or dietary factorsin more detail than the mea-surement of environmental concentrations or personal exposures to specific contami-nants. This accords with the authors' intention to confine themselves to" principles", although helpful examples are given throughout. The highly successfulstudies on smoking and health are cited in several different contexts, and one might add that despite limitations of recall and truthfulness current and even lifetime exposures through active smoking can be assessed more readily than those due to almost any other agent. The twelve chapters present a coherent story although with a certain amount of overlap. The types of" instruments" used, ranging from questionnaires to biochemical observations are described first, drawing attention to differences between cumulative doses, exposure rates and absorbeddoses, and the need to consider times over which doses may have been applied. Much attention is paid to errors in exposure measurement or classification, and to validation. These sections introduce consider-able amounts of mathematical statistics, designed however to be applied by the non-specialist without recourse to the derivation of formulae.The importance of reducing measure-ment errors is stressed with guidance on achieving this by increasing the number of measures per subject or otherwise, leading into practical details of quality control in the collection and processing of data. Chapter 6, on the design of questionnaires, is central to the theme of the book, and might logically have been placed earlier. It opens with a quotation from Bradford Hill, pleading for the number of questions in any survey to be the minimum necessary. There are salutary reminders about the style of language, to be understandable and acceptable to the subjects concerned, without risk of bias, and problems inherent in translating questionnaires into other languages are discussed. A further chapter deals with the conduct of personal interviews, with the intriguing comment that female high school or college
