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Reliability of baseline self-reported information in the AGRICAN cohort

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Abstract

Purpose

An important challenge in epidemiology is to ensure the reliability of collected data. Very few studies have been conducted in farming populations. We assessed the reliability of self-reported data on lifestyle, reproductive history, health and agricultural activities and tasks from the AGRICAN cohort.

Methods

Our analysis focused on 739 individuals from the 181,842 cohort members who completed the questionnaire twice between 2005 and 2007 with a median time interval of 452 days. Consistency in the responses to questionnaire items (lifestyle, health and agricultural activities including pesticide treatments) was assessed by the percentage of exact agreement (PA), Cohen’s Kappa value (K) and the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC).

Results

Agreement was substantial to almost perfect for education, smoking, reproductive history and most health indicators (K/ICC > 0.61). Agreement was moderate for alcohol consumption and fair for diet. Agreement was substantial for animal and crop farming activities and tasks such as pesticide use on crops and protective equipment use (PA 81–99%, K/ICC 0.61–0.96). Most tasks showed moderate to substantial agreement, except a few with low agreement. Substantial to perfect agreement was observed for the duration of tasks, based on exact years of beginning and ending.

Conclusion

Farmers’ answers appeared reliable for most occupational data, including data used to assess individual exposure to specific pesticides, and for most potential confounders.

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Data availability

No data are available. Individual data are available only for researchers who obtained a formal validation of their project by the scientific committee of AGRICAN. The AGRICAN cohort website can be visited for further details (www.agrican.fr).

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Acknowledgements

We thank S Deant and V Tribouillard for processing data from the enrollment questionnaire and C Gaultier, AS Lacauve, C Meyer and E Niez for technical assistance. We also thank Ray Cooke for copyediting the manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the Ligue Contre le Cancer (Nationale and Comités du Calvados, de l’Orne, de la Manche, du Maine et Loire et de Paris), the Mutualité Sociale Agricole (caisse centrale et caisses des Alpes du Nord, de l’Alsace, de Bourgogne, des Côtes Normandes, de Franche Comté, de Gironde, de Loire Atlantique–Vendée, de Midi Pyrénées Nord, de la Picardie), the Fondation de France (Mr Edouard Serres), the Agence Nationale de Sécurité Sanitaire de l’Alimentation, de l’Environnement et du Travail (ANSES) (within the call for projects 2005, 2006 and 2010 of the program «Environnement Santé Travail» of ANSES, with funding from l’Office national de l’eau et des milieux aquatiques in support of the Ecophyto 2018 plan), the Institut National du Cancer [Grant Number InCA 8422], the Association pour la Recherche sur le Cancer [Grant Number ARC 02–010], the Conseil Régional de Basse-Normandie, the Institut National de Médecine Agricole, the Centre François Baclesse, Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Unité Mixte de Recherche (UMR) 1086 ANTICIPE, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), Caen, France

    Séverine Tual, Johanna Giovannini, Mathilde Boulanger, Matthieu Meryet-Figuiere, Madar Talibov, Bénédicte Clin, Rémy Morello & Pierre Lebailly

  2. Université de Caen Normandie, Caen, France

    Séverine Tual, Johanna Giovannini, Mathilde Boulanger, Matthieu Meryet-Figuiere, Madar Talibov, Bénédicte Clin, Rémy Morello & Pierre Lebailly

  3. Centre de Lutte Contre le Cancer François Baclesse, Avenue du Général Harris, 14076, Caen Cedex 5, France

    Séverine Tual, Mathilde Boulanger, Matthieu Meryet-Figuiere, Madar Talibov & Pierre Lebailly

  4. CESP, Team Exposome and Heredity, INSERM, University Paris-Saclay, Villejuif, France

    Clémentine Lemarchand

  5. Unité de Biostatistique et Recherche Clinique, CHU de Caen Normandie, Caen, France

    Rémy Morello

  6. EPICENE Team, ISPED, INSERM U1219, Bordeaux Population Health Research Center, University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France

    Isabelle Baldi

  7. Service de Médecine du Travail et Pathologies Professionnelles, CHU de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France

    Isabelle Baldi

  8. Service de Pathologie Professionnelle, CHU de Caen, Caen, France

    Bénédicte Clin

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  1. Séverine Tual
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  7. Bénédicte Clin
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  9. Isabelle Baldi
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  10. Pierre Lebailly
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Contributions

ST had full access to all the data in the study, did the statistical analyses and wrote the manuscript. PL and IB designed the study and collected the data. All authors contributed to interpretation of the results, intellectual content, commented the draft of the manuscript, and approved the final submitted version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Séverine Tual.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the Advisory Committee on Information Processing in Material Research in the field of Health (Comité Consultatif sur le Traitement de l’Information en matière de Recherche dans le domaine de la Santé, Number 01.148) and the French data protection authority (Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés, Number 05.1292).

Consent to participate

All study participants gave their informed consent by sending back their enrollment questionnaire.

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Tual, S., Lemarchand, C., Giovannini, J. et al. Reliability of baseline self-reported information in the AGRICAN cohort. Cancer Causes Control 33, 331–342 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-021-01516-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-021-01516-z

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