Adjusting for Measurement Error in Retrospectively Reported Work Histories: An Analysis Using Swedish Register Data

Abstract

We use work histories retrospectively reported and matched to register data from the Swedish unemployment office to assess: 1) the prevalence of measurement error in reported spells of unemployment; 2) the impact of using such spells as the response variable of an exponential model; and 3) strategies for the adjustment of the measurement error. Due to the omission or misclassification of spells in work histories we cannot carry out typical adjustments for memory failures based on multiplicative models. Instead we suggest an adjustment method based on a mixture Bayesian model capable of differentiating between misdated spells and those for which the observed and true durations are unrelated. This adjustment is applied in two manners, one assuming access to a validation subsample and another relying on a strong prior for the mixture mechanism. Both solutions demonstrate a substantial reduction in the vast biases observed in the regression coefficients of the exponential model when survey data is used.

Moderate and Stable Pain Reductions as a Result of Interdisciplinary Pain Rehabilitation—A Cohort Study from the Swedish Quality Registry for Pain Rehabilitation (SQRP)

“…These two variables have retrospective elements even though they are not explicitly expressed. There are several problems with such items in general—e.g., desirability and memory aspects, recall time [79,80,81], and in treatment context (e.g., overly optimistic assessments) [82]. However, on a general level, these estimations and the two MIS variables (Table 6 and Table 7) agreed.…”

Influences of Sex, Education, and Country of Birth on Clinical Presentations and Overall Outcomes of Interdisciplinary Pain Rehabilitation in Chronic Pain Patients: A Cohort Study from the Swedish Quality Registry for Pain Rehabilitation (SQRP)

“…Changes that patients undergo because of IMMRPs may affect the interpretations of the PROM questions when presented post-IMMRPs and at follow-up. Retrospective evaluations may be problematic (e.g., recall time, desirability, memory aspects) [ 92 , 93 , 94 ]. On the other hand, MIS and these two items generally showed the same pattern.…”

The Impact of Measurement Error in Regression Models Using Police Recorded Crime Rates

“…Regardless of the complexity of the outcome model, this could be done using simulations, just as we have done in this study (the R code employed has been included in the supplementary material). Other flexible methods that could be used as sensitivity analysis tools are simulation-extrapolation (Biewen et al, 2008;Pina-Sánchez, 2016), multiple over-imputation (Blackwell et al, 2017), or Bayesian adjustments (Gustafson, 2003;Pina-Sánchez et al, 2019).…”