Adult female twins' recall of childhood social class and father's education: a validation study for public health research

Am J Epidemiol. 1998 Apr 1;147(7):704-8. doi: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a009512.

Abstract

To assess recall of childhood socioeconomic position for public health research, the authors conducted a cross-sectional study of 352 adult women twin pairs enrolled in Examination II of the Kaiser Permanente Women Twins Study carried out in 1989-1990 in Oakland, California. Among twin pairs, 91% (95% confidence interval (CI) 89-94%) agreed on their father's educational level and 81% (95% CI 77-85%) on their childhood social class. Recall did not differ by adult socioeconomic position, zygosity, race/ethnicity, or age. Thus, epidemiologic studies can validly use retrospective data on childhood socioeconomic position to study its relation to adult health status.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.
  • Twin Study

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Aged, 80 and over
  • Bias
  • Cross-Sectional Studies
  • Educational Status*
  • Epidemiologic Methods*
  • Fathers
  • Female
  • Health Status
  • Humans
  • Mental Recall*
  • Middle Aged
  • Occupations
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Social Class*
  • Surveys and Questionnaires
  • Twins*