3.4. Consistency of responses to pesticide use questionnaires
The levels of agreement of responses to pesticide use questions,
asked of the main MICASA cohort during two separate interviews
conducted in 2006–2007 and 2009–2010, between men and women
from the same household were found to be moderately high, with
Cohen kappa values ranging from 0.56 to 0.76 (Table 6). In the 63 of
436 households (17%) in which either the man or the woman reported
using outdoor pesticide sprays during the first interview, use was reported
by both the man and the woman in 28 households (44%), with
approximately equal proportions of only the man or only the woman
reporting pesticide use (Cohen's kappa = 0.56, 95% CI: 0.43–0.69).
There was higher estimated consistency for indoor sprays in the first
interview (Cohen's kappa = 0.76, 95% CI: 0.67–0.85).
There was only slight consistency in how a given participant
answered both the indoor and outdoor pesticide use questions when
asked the same questions at the two interviews conducted approximately
3 years apart (Table 7), with Cohen's kappa estimates ranging
from0.08 to 0.15. A larger fraction of the population reported using pesticides
at the second interviewthan at the first interview,with between
20.0 and 26.9% of individuals reporting use at the second that did not report
at the first, in contrast to the 5.4 to 11.3% of individuals reporting
use at first but not at the second. Only between 5.6 and 6.7% of individuals
reported use for both time periods.When answers from both men
andwomenwere combined to showif either one had reported pesticide