OBJECTIVE SYSTEM FOR INTERVIEWER PERFORMANCE EVALUATION FOR USE IN EPIDEMIOLOGIC STUDIES
OBJECTIVE SYSTEM FOR INTERVIEWER PERFORMANCE EVALUATION FOR USE IN EPIDEMIOLOGIC STUDIES
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DOI：
10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a117192
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发表时间：
1994-12-01
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
POTTER, JD
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
EDWARDS, S;SLATTERY, ML;POTTER, JD
在本文中，作者提出了一个客观的系统来评估访问者的表现，用于流行病学研究。有了这个质量控制系统，所有的研究访谈都被录音，并根据访谈者的行为对随机样本进行编码，例如访谈者是否完全按照书面要求提出问题，并适当地使用探针。通过使用从结肠癌的大型病例对照研究中获得的数据，作者观察到94.2%的所有问题都是由所有面试官以相同的方式提出的，89.5%的所有探查行为都是适当的。他们表明，需要额外的面试官行为的问题更有可能导致可归因于面试官的反应变化。这些发现对研究设计和研究结果的解释具有影响。通过模拟，作者估计了未校正的访谈者变异性对研究功效和检测疾病关联能力的影响。未校正的访谈者变异性可能会使研究功效从84%降低到56%。从模拟中，作者观察到优势比可以从1.8向下偏移到1.3。这些发现说明了在流行病学研究中使用连续质量控制计划的重要性。
In this paper, the authors present an objective system to evaluate interviewer performance for use in epidemiologic studies. With this quality control system, all study interviews are audio-taped, and a random sample of interviews are coded according to interviewer behaviors, such as whether the interviewer asked the questions exactly as written and used the probes appropriately. With the use of data obtained from a large case-control study of colon cancer, the authors observed that 94.2% of all questions were asked in the same manner by all interviewers and that 89.5% of all probing behaviors were appropriate. They show that questions that required additional interviewer behaviors were more likely to result in variation in response that can be attributed to the interviewer. These findings have implications for study design and interpretation of study results. From simulations, the authors have estimated the impact of uncorrected interviewer variability on study power and ability to detect disease associations. Uncorrected interviewer variability could decrease study power from 84% to 56%. From simulations, the authors observed that odds ratios could be biased downward from 1.8 to 1.3. These findings illustrate the importance of using a continuous quality control program in epidemiologic research.