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American Journal of Epidemiology Vol. 121, No. 2: 301-308
Copyright © 1985 by The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health

research-article

AN INVESTIGATION OF BIAS IN A STUDY OF NUCLEAR SHIPYARD WORKERS

E. ROBERT GREENBERG1,, BERNARD ROSNER2, CHARLES HENNEKENS2, RONALD RINSKY3 and THEODORE COLTON4

1Norris Cotton Cancer Center and Departments of Community and Family Medicine and Medicine, Dart mouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Hanover, NH
2Channing Laboratory, Departments of Medicine and Preventive Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology, Harvard Medical School Boston, MA
3Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations and Field Statistics, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Center for Disease Control Cincinnati, OH
4Boston University School of Public Health Boston, MA

Reprint requests to Dr. E. Robert Greenberg, Norris Cotton Cancer Center, Hanover, NH 03756

The authors examined discrepant findings between a 1978 proportional mortality study and a 1981 cohort study of workers at the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Naval Shipyard to determine whether the healthy worker effect, selection bias, or measurement bias could explain why only the proportional mortality study found excess cancer deaths amoung nuclear workers. Lower mortality from noncancer causes in nuclear workers (the healthy worker effect) partly accounted for the observed elevated cancer proportional mortality. More important, however, was measurement bias which occurred in the proportional mortality study when nuclear workers who had not died of cancer were misclassified as not being nuclear workers based on information from their next of kin, thereby creating a spurious association. Although the proportional mortality study was based on a small sample of all deaths occurring in the cohort, selection bias dkl not contribute materially to the discrepant results for total cancer deaths. With regard to leukemia, misclassification of occupation in the proportional mortality study and disagreement about cause of death accounted for some of the reported excess deaths.

epidemiologic methods; mortality; neoplasms; radiation effects


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