Journal
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY
Volume 171, Issue 9, Pages 1031-1036Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwq024
Keywords
accidental falls; aged; cohort studies; data collection; epidemiologic methods; frail elderly; mental recall; reproducibility of results
Categories
Funding
- National Institute on Aging
- Nursing Home Program Project [P01AG004390, R01AG026316, R37AG25037]
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Tracking falls among elders is challenging. In this reliability study, which took place between October 2007 and February 2008, the authors compared participants' daily recordings of falls on calendars with a telephone survey of recall of falls over the previous 3 months within the population-based MOBILIZE Boston Study cohort, a cohort of 765 elders. From the cohort, 218 participants were randomly selected. Falls were tracked prospectively on daily calendars (mailed back monthly). Telephone recalls of falls over the previous 3 months were conducted in January and February 2008. Agreement, sensitivity, and specificity were calculated to compare the occurrence of falls as determined by 3-month recall with falls recorded by daily calendar (gold standard) during the same 3-month period. Results showed good agreement between recall and calendars: 27 persons reported a fall by both methods. However, while the 3-month recall correctly classified persons who did not fall (164 persons by both methods), it missed 25% of participants who fell (of 36 participants with a calendar-reported fall, 9 did not report a fall by telephone recall). Kappa was 0.74 (95% confidence interval: 0.68, 0.80), sensitivity was 75%, and specificity was 96%. Retrospective 3-month recall of falls resulted in underreporting of falls by as much as 25% compared with daily calendars. Calendars should be considered the preferred method of ascertaining falls in longitudinal studies.
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