Smith G D, Shipley M J
Department of Epidemiology and Population Sciences, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, U.K.
Soc Sci Med. 1991;32(11):1297-300. doi: 10.1016/0277-9536(91)90046-f.
In a recent contribution to this journal, Sterling and Weinkam discuss the importance of the confounding of occupation and smoking when considering the contribution of smoking to mortality risk. In this report we provide estimates of the potential magnitude of this effect using data from a cohort study. It is shown that failing to consider possible confounding by socio-economic factors can lead to over-estimating of the strength of the relationship between smoking and mortality. The implications of these findings for the interpretation of results derived from observational studies are discussed.
在近期发表于本期刊的一篇文章中，斯特林和温卡姆讨论了在考虑吸烟对死亡风险的影响时，职业与吸烟混淆因素的重要性。在本报告中，我们使用一项队列研究的数据对这种影响的潜在程度进行了估计。结果表明，未能考虑社会经济因素可能存在的混杂作用会导致高估吸烟与死亡率之间关系的强度。本文还讨论了这些发现对解释观察性研究结果的意义。
