The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
Centre for Health Policy and Management, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
J Appl Gerontol. 2021 Oct;40(10):1189-1196. doi: 10.1177/0733464820935295. Epub 2020 Jul 7.
Cause of death is an important outcome in end-of-life (EOL) research. However, difficulties in assigning cause of death have been well documented. We compared causes of death in national death registrations with those reported in EOL interviews. Data were from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), a nationally representative sample of community-dwelling adults aged 50 years and older. The kappa agreement statistic was estimated to assess the level of agreement between two methods: cause of death reported in EOL interviews and those recorded in official death registrations. There was moderate agreement between underlying cause of death recorded on death certificates and those reported in EOL interviews. Discrepancies in reporting in EOL interviews were systematic with better agreement found among younger decedents and where the EOL informant was the decedents' partner/spouse. We have shown that EOL interviews may have limited utility if the main goal is to understand the predictors and antecedents of different causes of death.
死亡原因是生命末期（EOL）研究中的一个重要结果。然而，确定死亡原因的困难已经得到充分记录。我们比较了国家死亡登记处报告的死亡原因与生命末期访谈中报告的死亡原因。数据来自爱尔兰老龄化纵向研究（TILDA），这是一项具有全国代表性的 50 岁及以上社区居住成年人样本。kappa 一致性统计量用于评估两种方法之间的一致性水平：生命末期访谈中报告的死亡原因和官方死亡登记处记录的死亡原因。死亡证明上记录的根本死因与生命末期访谈中报告的死因之间存在中度一致性。在生命末期访谈中报告的死因存在系统偏差，在较年轻的死者和生命末期信息提供者是死者的伴侣/配偶的情况下，一致性更好。我们已经表明，如果主要目标是了解不同死亡原因的预测因素和前因，那么生命末期访谈可能用处不大。
