Collecting retrospective data: Accuracy of recall after 50 years judged against historical records

doi:10.1016/S0277-9536(97)00088-9

Social Science & Medicine

Volume 45, Issue 10, November 1997, Pages 1519-1525

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(97)00088-9 Get rights and content

Abstract

Recent interest in a lifecourse perspective on health inequalities will rekindle concerns about the accuracy of retrospective data. The present paper demonstrates that recalled information on some types of social circumstances can be obtained with a useful degree of accuracy using an interview technique which helps to minimize recall bias. Lifegrid information about social circumstances during their youth and childhood was collected from 57 subjects in early old age and compared with archive material of the same subjects' social circumstances recorded 50 years previously. A comparison of interview with archive data revealed that a substantial majority of subjects had recalled simple sociodemographic information after a period of 50 years with a useful degree of accuracy. Within lifecourse research, it is concluded, carefully collected retrospective data offer a valuable complement to birth cohort studies, provided that such usage is sensitive to the types of items of information which can, and can not, be recalled accurately.

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Collecting retrospective data: Accuracy of recall after 50 years judged against historical records

Abstract

Social Science & Medicine

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Public Health

Autobiographical memory and survey methodology: furthering the bridge between the two disciplines

Validity of work histories obtained by interview for epidemiologic purposes

American Journal of Epidemiology

What is autobiographical memory?

Validity of self reported work history

British Journal of Industrial Medicine

Answering autobiographical questions: the impact of memory and inference on surveys

Science

Organization of public events in long-term memory

Journal of Experimental Psychology (General)

On the state of the public health

Health Trends

The reliability of recall data: a literature review

Memory of food intake in the distant past

American Journal of Epidemiology

Methodological, statistical and practical issues arising from the collection and analysis of work history information by survey techniques

Bulletin de Methodologie Sociologique

Retrospective reports by healthy intelligent elderly people of personal events of their adult lives

International Journal of Behavioural Development

Improving long term recall in epidemiologic studies

Epidemiology