%0 Journal Article
%T Effects on the estimated cause-specific mortality fraction of providing physician reviewers with different formats of verbal autopsy data
%A Rohina Joshi
%A Devarsetty Praveen
%A Clara Chow
%A Bruce Neal
%J Population Health Metrics
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1478-7954-9-33
%X Verbal autopsies were done by primary health care workers for all deaths between October 2006 and September 2007 in a community in rural Andhra Pradesh, India (total population about 180,162). Each questionnaire had a structured section, composed of a series of check boxes, and a free-text section, in which a narrative description of the events leading to death was recorded. For each death, a physician coder was presented first with one section and then the other in random order with a 20- to 40-day interval between. A cause of death was recorded for each data format at the level of ICD 10 chapter headings or else the death was documented as unclassified. After another 20- to 40-day interval, both the structured and free-text sections of the questionnaire were presented together and an index cause of death was assigned.In all, 1,407 verbal autopsies were available for analysis, representing 94% of all deaths recorded in the population that year. An index cause of death was assigned using the combined data for 1,190 with the other 217 remaining unclassified. The observed cause-specific mortality fractions were the same regardless of whether the structured, free-text or combined data sources were used. At the individual level, the assignments made using the structured format matched the index in 1,012 (72%) of cases with a kappa statistic of 0.66. For the free-text format, the corresponding figures were 989 (70%) and 0.64.The format of the verbal autopsy data used to assign a cause of death did not substantively influence the pattern of mortality estimated. Substantially abbreviated and simplified verbal autopsy questionnaires might provide robust information about high-level mortality patterns.Verbal autopsy methods have their origins in the 17th century lay-reporting systems developed for monitoring epidemics [1]. Those early "death searches" centered upon an interview of the family of the deceased person with the goal of establishing whether the cause of death was
%K verbal autopsy
%K questionnaire format
%K physician reviewer
%K mortality
%U http://www.pophealthmetrics.com/content/9/1/33