Reproducibility of an alcohol questionnaire for a case-control study on chronic liver diseases

During a pilot phase of a hospital based case-control study on chronic liver diseases, an evaluation of the reproducibility of a alcohologic questionnaire suitable to investigate on quantity and duration of alcohol intake in the course of the life, was carried. The study consisted in the interview of 15 cases, 20 controls and their 35 relatives. Significative agreement between patients and relatives responses was found; homogeneous level of agreement was found neither among different alcohol consumption measures or between cases and controls. Some hypotheses on the factors that reduce the questionnaire reproducibility and on validity of estimated association measures between alcohol dose, detectable from questionnaire, and risk of chronic hepatopathies are presented. The possibility of using the questionnaire in studies on other diseases and population-based case-control studies, is discussed