Longitudinal birth cohort studies often assign environmental exposure during pregnancy based on residential address of the mother at the time of birth. This might lead to exposure misclassification due to residential mobility during pregnancy. Inaccurate or incomplete address records in cohort studies may be a further source of exposure misclassification. We developed an ALGorithm for Generating Address Exposures (ALGAE) to provides a generic and adaptable, open-source solution to clean addresses stored in a cohort contact database and assign life-stage specific exposure estimates with the potential to reduce exposure misclassification.
This study was supported by the UK Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust (Grant ref.: 102215/2/13/2). The work presented here was specifically funded by The UK Medical Research Council: “Effects Of Early Life Exposure To Particulates On Respiratory Health Through Childhood And Adolescence: ALSPAC Birth Cohort Study”, Grant Ref: G0700920.