Ossiander Eric M, Milham Samuel
Washington State Department of Health, Olympia, Washington 98504, USA.
Am J Ind Med. 2006 Oct;49(10):854-7. doi: 10.1002/ajim.20355.
Occupation information is widely used in epidemiologic studies and is collected on most death certificates and many birth certificates in the United States. Coding the massive amount of occupation information collected has been a challenge.
A simple word-matching computer program to code occupation entries from vital records was developed. The accuracy of the program was evaluated by comparing its output to codes assigned by human coders.
In routine use in the Washington State Department of Health (DOH), the computer system codes 96-97% of the occupation entries on birth and death records. It assigned the correct code on 89% (95% confidence interval (87%, 91%)) of the records it coded.
The occupation-coding program is both efficient and accurate and can simplify the process of coding occupation entries from vital records. The system is adaptable and can be modified to use occupation classifications other than the one used by DOH.
职业信息在流行病学研究中被广泛使用，在美国，大多数死亡证明和许多出生证明上都收集了职业信息。对收集到的大量职业信息进行编码一直是一项挑战。
开发了一个简单的单词匹配计算机程序，用于对生命记录中的职业条目进行编码。通过将程序输出与人工编码员分配的代码进行比较，评估了该程序的准确性。
在华盛顿州卫生部（DOH）的日常使用中，计算机系统对出生和死亡记录上96 - 97%的职业条目进行编码。在其编码的记录中，89%（95%置信区间（87%，91%））被分配了正确的代码。
职业编码程序既高效又准确，可以简化对生命记录中职业条目的编码过程。该系统具有适应性，可以修改以使用除卫生部使用的职业分类之外的其他职业分类。
