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Comparison of indicators of material circumstances in the context of an epidemiological study
BACKGROUND: Since individual-level income is difficult to collect, investigators often rely on group-based measures derived from census data. No study has assessed the use of residential property values as an indicator of individual material circumstances. We aimed to compare two proxy indicators of...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2011
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3148575/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21767408 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-11-108 |
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author | Nkosi, Thomas Matukala Parent, Marie-Elise Siemiatycki, Jack Pintos, Javier Rousseau, Marie-Claude |
author_facet | Nkosi, Thomas Matukala Parent, Marie-Elise Siemiatycki, Jack Pintos, Javier Rousseau, Marie-Claude |
author_sort | Nkosi, Thomas Matukala |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Since individual-level income is difficult to collect, investigators often rely on group-based measures derived from census data. No study has assessed the use of residential property values as an indicator of individual material circumstances. We aimed to compare two proxy indicators of material circumstances, one based on residential value and the other on median census tract income, to self-reported household income. METHODS: We used data from a case-control study (1996-2002), restricting analyses to 676 residents of the Island of Montreal for whom the three indicators were available. The degree of discrepancy between the residential value index, census income, and self-reported household income - each in 5 categories - was estimated, along with overall and weighted Kappas. RESULTS: When comparing residential value index and census income to self-reported household income, perfect concordance was observed for 38% and 30% of subjects, respectively; very good concordance, defined as ≤ 1 category difference, was observed for 76% and 69% of subjects, respectively. When compared to self-reported household income, overall and weighted Kappas showed stronger agreement with residential value index (weighted Kappa = 0.37, 95% CI: 0.32, 0.42) than with census income (weighted Kappa = 0.25, 95% CI: 0.20, 0.30). CONCLUSIONS: A residential value index may provide a measure of material circumstances that is closer to self-reported household income than the commonly used census income. Each indicator presents advantages and disadvantages, and their choice may depend on study objectives and feasibility. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3148575 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2011 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-31485752011-08-03 Comparison of indicators of material circumstances in the context of an epidemiological study Nkosi, Thomas Matukala Parent, Marie-Elise Siemiatycki, Jack Pintos, Javier Rousseau, Marie-Claude BMC Med Res Methodol Research Article BACKGROUND: Since individual-level income is difficult to collect, investigators often rely on group-based measures derived from census data. No study has assessed the use of residential property values as an indicator of individual material circumstances. We aimed to compare two proxy indicators of material circumstances, one based on residential value and the other on median census tract income, to self-reported household income. METHODS: We used data from a case-control study (1996-2002), restricting analyses to 676 residents of the Island of Montreal for whom the three indicators were available. The degree of discrepancy between the residential value index, census income, and self-reported household income - each in 5 categories - was estimated, along with overall and weighted Kappas. RESULTS: When comparing residential value index and census income to self-reported household income, perfect concordance was observed for 38% and 30% of subjects, respectively; very good concordance, defined as ≤ 1 category difference, was observed for 76% and 69% of subjects, respectively. When compared to self-reported household income, overall and weighted Kappas showed stronger agreement with residential value index (weighted Kappa = 0.37, 95% CI: 0.32, 0.42) than with census income (weighted Kappa = 0.25, 95% CI: 0.20, 0.30). CONCLUSIONS: A residential value index may provide a measure of material circumstances that is closer to self-reported household income than the commonly used census income. Each indicator presents advantages and disadvantages, and their choice may depend on study objectives and feasibility. BioMed Central 2011-07-18 /pmc/articles/PMC3148575/ /pubmed/21767408 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-11-108 Text en Copyright ©2011 Nkosi et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Nkosi, Thomas Matukala Parent, Marie-Elise Siemiatycki, Jack Pintos, Javier Rousseau, Marie-Claude Comparison of indicators of material circumstances in the context of an epidemiological study |
title | Comparison of indicators of material circumstances in the context of an epidemiological study |
title_full | Comparison of indicators of material circumstances in the context of an epidemiological study |
title_fullStr | Comparison of indicators of material circumstances in the context of an epidemiological study |
title_full_unstemmed | Comparison of indicators of material circumstances in the context of an epidemiological study |
title_short | Comparison of indicators of material circumstances in the context of an epidemiological study |
title_sort | comparison of indicators of material circumstances in the context of an epidemiological study |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3148575/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21767408 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-11-108 |
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