Alcohol consumption in Switzerland 1987-93: adjusting for differential effect of assessment techniques on the analysis of trends.

Estimation of time trends in alcohol consumption for recent years in Switzerland is complicated by the fact that the assessment method was changed from personal interview to self-administered questionnaire. With a large-scale study which compared the two methods, it is possible in estimating time trends to allow for adjustment of the effects produced by this change of assessment method. Results indicate that alcohol consumption decreased by about 17% between 1987 and 1993.

Pet birds as an independent risk factor for lung cancer: case-control study.

Objective: To test the hypothesis that exposure to pet birds increases risk of developing lung cancer.

Design: Case-control study. Computerised interviews were used to assess previous exposure to pets and other risk factors for lung cancer.

Using follow-up data to avoid omitted variable bias: an application to cardiovascular epidemiology.

Omitted variable bias is discussed in the context of linear models. It is shown that the effect of omitted variables can be controlled in linear models for metric dependent variables by using data from follow-up studies. Two different models for analysing such data are proposed.

Modeling household fertility decisions: a nonlinear simultaneous probit model.

"This article proposes new methods for modeling household fertility decisions...

[Voluntary versus involuntary sample surveys in the microcensus].

The author compares aspects of voluntary and involuntary sample surveys in West Germany. "The German microcensus as a non-voluntary survey draws a random sample from the total population which includes persons that would also respond in a voluntary survey (respondents) and persons that would not respond (non-respondents). The population of a voluntary survey, however, includes only respondents.