School
School of Public Health
Document Type
Dissertation
Department (new version)
Public Health
Date of Award
2000
Degree Name by School
Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) School of Public Health
Abstract
Two studies were undertaken focusing on the validity of young adults' self-reports of reasons for hospitalization and factors affecting validity. The first study assessed the concordance of self-reports by young adults of reasons for hospitalization with their medical records, and the second examined factors associated with discordance between self-reports and medical records. The first study demonstrated that although concordance or accuracy of self-reports was more than 90% overall, for specific disease categories it ranged from 80% for infections to 100% for injuries/fractures and procedures including surgeries. There was no significant difference in degree of concordance by method of collecting self-reported data (i.e., mailed questionnaires, telephone contacts or face-to-face interviews, p = 0.63). Findings from the second study indicate that subjects' personal characteristics may influence the accuracy of self-reports. For overall reasons for hospitalization (i.e., including all categories of reasons for hospitalization), being Black was positively and significantly associated with discordance between self-reports and medical records in a multiple logistic regression analysis (OR = 3.26; 95% CI: 1.10, 9.61; p = 0.03). No other variables were significantly associated with inaccuracy of self-reports of reasons for hospitalization overall after adjustment for other variables. For hospitalization due to infections specifically, hostility was significantly associated with discordance in a univariate analysis (OR = 10.00; 95% CI: 0.99, 100.61; p = 0.05). The wide confidence interval caused by small sample size, and the use of an unadjusted odds ratio, however, suggests that caution is needed in interpretation of this association. Findings of the two studies suggest that self-reports can be a valid method of collecting data on young adults' reasons for hospitalization in general, although for certain specific reasons for hospitalization researchers should be cautious about relying on this method of data collection alone. Further, personal characteristics of subjects may influence the accuracy of their self-reports. Researchers need, thus, to be attentive to characteristics of their study population and to the specific reasons for hospitalization they are examining, when assessing whether the use of self-reports will be appropriate in obtaining reasonably valid outcome data.
ProQuest Publication Number
ProQuest ID
3001309
ISBN
978-0-493-09908-8
Recommended Citation
Rahman, S M Atiqur, "Self -reports of reasons for hospitalization by young adults: Validity and risk factors for discordance with medical records" (2000). All ETDs from UAB. 7209.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/7209
Comments
DrPH