Development of a life events/icon calendar questionnaire to ascertain occupational histories and other characteristics of migrant farmworkers

Background Specialized methods are necessary to collect data from migrant f arm-workers for epidemiologic research. Methods We developed a questionnaire that collected lifetime occupational h istories and other lifestyle risk factors via a life events/icon calendar; and administered the questionnaire to a convenience sample of 162 migrant f armworkers in nine areas of the U.S. Results The average duration of the interviews was about 1 h 30 min, with a n average of 45 min for the work history section. The occupational historie s covered a median of 27.6 years per person for men and 20.8 years per pers on for women. The median number of years spent in farm jobs was 11.3 for me n and 5.8 for women. Thc median number of farm jobs (crop/task combination) per person was 59 among men and 27 among women. Many farmworkers performed the same crop/task combinations at multiple times throughout their lives, yielding a median of 13 unique farm jobs and 8 unique crops among men and 7 jobs and 5 crops among women. Conclusions The project demonstrated that it is feasible to collect detaile d work histories and other risk factor data from farmworkers, documented th e complexity of work histories encountered among farmworkers, and yielded r ecommendations for refining a questionnaire that will facilitate future epi demiologic research on farmworkers. (C) 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.