Faculty Collaboration Database

A two-stage protocol for verifying vital status in large historical cohort studies. J Occup Environ Med 1997 Nov;39(11):1097-102

Date

01/10/1998

Pubmed ID

9383720

DOI

10.1097/00043764-199711000-00010

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-0030712256 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   18 Citations

Abstract

When access to the Social Security Administration's Master Death Claim File was restricted in the mid-1980s, researchers were left with no time- and cost-effective protocol for verifying the vital status of large historical cohorts. A two-stage tracing protocol was designed to overcome this restriction. Stage I relies on national-scale sources to focus on the complete and accurate identification of deaths among persons unconfirmed as alive and assumes that persons not identified as deceased are alive. Stage II tests the "alive" assumption by extensively tracing a random sample of cohort members with unconfirmed vital status. Stage II provides unbiased estimates of the proportion of deaths among the assumed "alives" in the cohort (misclassification rate) and the proportion of persons untraceable in the total cohort. This paper describes our two-stage protocol and an application to a large, ongoing occupational cohort study.

Author List

Schall LC, Marsh GM, Henderson VL

Author

Laura Cassidy PhD Associate Dean, Institute Director, Professor in the Institute for Health and Humanity department at Medical College of Wisconsin

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Aged
Cause of Death
Cohort Studies
Costs and Cost Analysis
Death Certificates
Decision Trees
Epidemiologic Methods
Humans
Information Services
Information Storage and Retrieval
Medicare
Occupational Diseases
Registries
Sensitivity and Specificity
Social Security
United States
Vital Statistics