Do sociodemographic characteristics and diabetes predict invalid self-reported non-smoking in a population-based study of U.S. adults?
Validity of self-reported non-smoking may be related to the relatively slowly progressing chronic nature of diabetes, in contrast with the acute event of myocardial infarction which could be considered a more serious, major life changing event. These data also raise questions regarding the possible role of societal desirability in the validity of self-reported non-smoking, especially among smokers with diabetes, who did not graduate from high school, and who were NHB females.
Our findings demonstrate that for the surveys we examined, larger effective sample sizes (i.e., more statistical power) could have been achieved with the same amount of funding using less aggressive calling protocols. For some studies, money spent on aggressively pursuing high response rates could be better used to increase statistical power and/or to directly examine nonresponse bias.