Mathiowetz N A, Dipko S M
Joint Program in Survey Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park 20742, USA.
Med Care. 2000 Apr;38(4):374-82. doi: 10.1097/00005650-200004000-00004.
Most assessments of response error have focused only on reports by adult respondents; we know little about the propensity to misreport or the magnitude or direction of response error for self-reports by adolescents. To the extent that adults and adolescents differ in the magnitude or direction of response error, comparisons between adults and adolescents will be confounded. This study compares the quality of self-response among adolescents and adults in their reporting of health conditions and health care utilization.
Approximately 2,000 members of an HMO were interviewed, and by use of medical record information, the accuracy of their responses was assessed for several measures: number of outpatient visits, date of the most recent outpatient visit, site of care, type of professional seen during the last visit, and an indicator as to whether the respondent had asthma.
The findings indicate that both the magnitude and the direction of response error vary by the age of the respondent. In multivariate models predicting erroneous response, adolescents were more likely to misreport than were adult respondents. In addition, among erroneous respondents, adolescents tended to err in the direction of overreporting, whereas adult respondents tended to err in the direction of underreporting.
Although the results should be viewed cautiously because of limitations in both the sample design and the survey topic, the findings suggest that substantive comparisons of health care utilization between adolescents and adults may be confounded by differential measurement error.
大多数对回答误差的评估仅聚焦于成年受访者的报告；我们对青少年自我报告中误报的倾向、回答误差的大小或方向了解甚少。如果成年人和青少年在回答误差的大小或方向上存在差异，那么成年人与青少年之间的比较将会受到混淆。本研究比较了青少年和成年人在报告健康状况及医疗服务利用情况时自我回答的质量。
对一家健康维护组织（HMO）的约2000名成员进行了访谈，并利用病历信息，针对以下几项指标评估了他们回答的准确性：门诊就诊次数、最近一次门诊就诊日期、就诊地点、上次就诊时所看专业类型，以及受访者是否患有哮喘的一项指标。
研究结果表明，回答误差的大小和方向均因受访者年龄而异。在预测错误回答的多变量模型中，青少年比成年受访者更有可能误报。此外，在错误回答者中，青少年倾向于多报，而成年受访者则倾向于少报。
尽管由于样本设计和调查主题的局限性，应谨慎看待这些结果，但研究结果表明，青少年和成年人在医疗服务利用方面的实质性比较可能会因测量误差的差异而受到混淆。
