BACKGROUND: Occupational epidemiology plays an important role in public health by describing and analyzing environmental and occupational hazards affecting workers, and sometimes the general public. Since the results of occupational epidemiology serve as the background for public policy making as well as individual worker and employer decisions, the accuracy of these studies is quite important. No previous studies have attempted to describe the occupational epidemiology literature.
METHODS: This study examines author affiliation, funding source, outcome, and topic in two major occupational health journals published in the United States in order to describe the literature over the past three decades and to find associations between the stated variables.
RESULTS: Associations between U.S. industry funded or U.S. industry authored studies and outcome were observed, with an increase in negative outcome (pro-industry) studies as compared to U.S. federally funded or U.S. university authored studies. An overall increase in international sponsoring and performance of occupational epidemiology has also been observed over the past three decades.
CONCLUSIONS: The published occupational epidemiology literature in two U.S. journals demonstrated associations between funding source and outcome as well as author affiliation and outcome. Further research is recommended to follow up on the findings of this study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-06132008-105604 |
| Date | 28 September 2008 |
| Creators | Singleton, Karen Anderson |
| Contributors | John Mendeloff, Ph.D., Gary M. Marsh, Ph.D., Joseph J. Schwerha, MD, MPH |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-06132008-105604/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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