APHA 123rd Annual Meeting Program, San Diego, 1995.
Strategies for resolution of vital status in cohort mortality studiesVincent C. Arena, Joseph P. Costantino, Carol K. Redmond, Gordon BassCohort mortality studies are commonly used to evaluate the health risks associated with occupation, environment and personal habits. In conducting a cohort study it is paramount that the researcher be able to completely and accurately resolve the vital status for each study subject. Often times, researchers identify alive individuals by assumption. An individual subject is assumed alive at the end of the study in the absence of death information. Using this approach does not provide positive ascertainment of alive vital status and can be misleading. Therefore, all vital status resolution should be done using a nonpassive approach. In the past the Social Security Administration (SSA) provided information about both death and working status information for individuals and was the single most important resource. As the result of a policy change, the SSA will only provide information for deceased individuals. This has necessitated changes in how researchers obtain positive ascertainment of vital status. Our study discusses several approaches for vital status resolution and their merits. Results from a large occupational cohort study of 31165 high nickel alloys workers are used as an illustrative example. |