3,138 Studies Reviewed. 77.4% Found Biological Effects. The Evidence is Clear.

Note: This study found no significant biological effects under its experimental conditions. We include all studies for scientific completeness.

Validation of self-reported cellular phone use.

No Effects Found

Samkange-Zeeb F, Berg G, Blettner M · 2004

View Original Abstract
Share:

People significantly underestimate their actual cell phone usage, making most health studies less reliable than they appear.

Plain English Summary

Summary written for general audiences

German researchers tested how accurately people remember their cell phone usage by comparing what 68 people reported in surveys to their actual phone records from network providers over three months. They found people were reasonably good at remembering how many calls they made per day (62% accuracy) but much worse at remembering how long each call lasted (34% accuracy). This matters because most cell phone health studies rely on people accurately reporting their usage patterns.

Study Details

In recent years, concern has been raised over possible adverse health effects of cellular telephone use. In epidemiological studies of cancer risk associated with the use of cellular telephones, the validity of self-reported cellular phone use has been problematic. Up to now there is very little information published on this subject.

We conducted a study to validate the questionnaire used in an ongoing international case-control stu...

Using Spearman's rank correlation, the correlation between self-reported phone use and information f...

Our study suggests that cellular phone use is easier to recall in terms of number of calls made than in terms of cumulative phone use and should thus be used as the basis for the dose-response analysis.

Cite This Study
Samkange-Zeeb F, Berg G, Blettner M (2004). Validation of self-reported cellular phone use. J Expo Anal Environ Epidemiol. 14(3):245-248, 2004.
Show BibTeX
@article{f_2004_validation_of_selfreported_cellular_3353,
  author = {Samkange-Zeeb F and Berg G and Blettner M},
  title = {Validation of self-reported cellular phone use.},
  year = {2004},
  
  url = {https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15141153/},
}

Quick Questions About This Study

German researchers tested how accurately people remember their cell phone usage by comparing what 68 people reported in surveys to their actual phone records from network providers over three months. They found people were reasonably good at remembering how many calls they made per day (62% accuracy) but much worse at remembering how long each call lasted (34% accuracy). This matters because most cell phone health studies rely on people accurately reporting their usage patterns.