Do people self-reporting information about chronic respiratory disease have corroborative evidence in their general practice medical records? A study of intermethod reliability.

AIMS: To use intermethod reliability to compare self-reported data about chronic respiratory disease and health service utilisation with data contained in general practice medical records.

METHODS

Self-reported postal questionnaire information from a small cohort of an age-sex stratified sample of 2318 patients was compared with information contained in their medical records. The agreement between the two sources of information was assessed.

RESULTS

The case notes of 115/135 individuals from eight general practices were examined. For self-reported chest injury or operation (kappa, kappa=-0.03), or chronic bronchitis (kappa=0.10), agreement was poor. Agreement for self-reported pleurisy (kappa=0.32), hay fever or rhinitis (kappa=0.40), or eczema or dermatitis (kappa=0.30) was fair; for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or emphysema (kappa=0.56), or heart trouble (kappa=0.54), agreement was moderate; for asthma (kappa=0.78) or pneumonia (kappa=0.62), agreement was good; and for pulmonary tuberculosis (kappa=0.88), agreement was very good. The strength of agreement for information about health service utilisation for respiratory problems ranged from moderate to very good and was good for smoking status.

CONCLUSIONS

Although based on small numbers, our results suggest good or very good agreement between self-reported data and general practice medical records for the absence or presence of some respiratory conditions and some types of respiratory-related health care utilisation. Depending on the research question being examined self-reported information may be appropriate.