Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2021 Mar;30(1):e1853.
doi: 10.1002/mpr.1853. Epub 2020 Sep 17.

Improving reports of health risks: Life history calendars and measurement of potentially traumatic experiences

William G Axinn  1 , Stephanie Chardoul  1
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Improving reports of health risks: Life history calendars and measurement of potentially traumatic experiences

William G Axinn et al. Int J Methods Psychiatr Res. 2021 Mar.

Abstract

Objectives: Recall error biases reporting of earlier life experiences, even potentially traumatic experiences (PTEs). Better tools for accurate retrospective reporting of PTEs and other health risk factors have the potential for broad scientific and health intervention benefits.

Methods: We designed a life history calendar (LHC) to support this task and randomized more than 1000 individuals to each arm of a retrospective diagnostic interview, including detailed measures of PTEs, with and without the LHC. This is one of the largest experiments ever done to assess the benefit of an LHC approach and the only large-scale experiment done in a poor, agrarian, non-Western setting (rural Nepal).

Results: Results demonstrate use of an LHC in retrospective measurement can significantly increase lifetime reports of PTEs, especially reports of two or more PTEs. The LHC increases PTE reporting more for men and those with less education.

Conclusions: The LHC approach is practical for many uses ranging from large surveys of the general population to clinical intake of new patients. It significantly increases reporting of health risk factors.

Keywords: improving reporting; life history calendars; potentially traumatic experiences; recall bias; rural Asia.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Anda, R. F. , Croft, J. B. , Felitti, V. J. , Nordenberg, D. , Giles, W. H. , Williamson, D. F. , & Giovino, G. A. (1999). Adverse childhood experiences and smoking during adolescence and adulthood. Journal of the American Medical Association, 282(17), 1652–1658. 10.1001/jama.282.17.1652 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Axinn, W. G. , Barber, J. S. , & Ghimire, D. J. (1997). The neighborhood history calendar: A data collection method designed for dynamic multilevel modeling. Sociological Methodology, 27(1), 355–392. 10.1111/1467-9531.271031 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Axinn, W. G. , Chardoul, S. , Gatny, H. , Ghimire, D. J. , Smoller, J. W. , Zhang, Y. , & Scott, K. M. (2019). Using life history calendars to improve measurement of lifetime experience with mental disorders. Psychological Medicine, 50(3), 515–522. 10.1017/S0033291719000394 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Axinn, W. G. , Ghimire, D. J. , & Williams, N. E. (2012). Collecting survey data during armed conflict. Journal of Official Statistics, 28(2), 153–171. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Axinn, W. G. , & Pearce, L. D. (2006). Mixed method data collection strategies. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Publication types