The quality and diagnostic value of open narratives in verbal autopsy: a mixed-methods analysis of partnered interviews from Malawi

BMC Medical Research Methodology
C KingVacSurv Consortium

Abstract

Verbal autopsy (VA), the process of interviewing a deceased's family or caregiver about signs and symptoms leading up to death, employs tools that ask a series of closed questions and can include an open narrative where respondents give an unprompted account of events preceding death. The extent to which an individual interviewer, who generally does not interpret the data, affects the quality of this data, and therefore the assigned cause of death, is poorly documented. We aimed to examine inter-interviewer reliability of open narrative and closed question data gathered during VA interviews. During the introduction of VA data collection, as part of a larger study in Mchinji district, Malawi, we conducted partner interviews whereby two interviewers independently recorded open narrative and closed questions during the same interview. Closed questions were collected using a smartphone application (mobile-InterVA) and open narratives using pen and paper. We used mixed methods of analysis to evaluate the differences between recorded responses to open narratives and closed questions, causes of death assigned, and additional information gathered by open narrative. Eighteen partner interviews were conducted, with complete data for 11 p...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jul 19, 2017·The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal·Videlis NdubaKayla F Laserson
Jul 11, 2019·BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making·Serena JebleeGraeme Hirst
Nov 2, 2017·International Journal of Epidemiology·Rohina JoshiHebe Gouda

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Software Mentioned

InterVA ( MIVA )
CCVA
InterVA
Access
Stata SE11
MIVA

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