AGREEMENT BETWEEN REPORTED FISH CONSUMPTION OBTAINED BY 2 INTERVIEWS AND ITS IMPACT ON THE RESULTS IN A REPRODUCTION STUDY

In an ongoing study of the hypothesised association between consumptio n of fish contaminated with persistent organochlorine compounds and lo w birth weight, a relevant measure of exposure is the accumulated fish consumption over long time periods. An issue of concern in this study is the quality of the retrospective exposure assessments. The present investigation was undertaken to determine the agreement between repor ted fish consumption in two interviews with approximately one year in between, in order to evaluate its impact on the effect estimates. The agreement decreased with increasing retrospective time interval betwee n interview and focused time period of fish consumption. Furthermore, the exposure assessments based on the two interviews led to considerab ly different effect estimates.