부산대학교 도서관

Retrospective assessment of individual exposure in occupational settings is often based on the association of individual work histories with quantitative and semi-quantitative exposure information. In the absence of exposure information, researchers have commonly used proxy variables, but with strong assumptions and some limitations. In the present work, we estimate the time-varying exposure-risk function associated with the outcomes of interest, taking into account functional regression models and individual work periods. The work was motivated by the analysis of a cohort of dock workers occupationally exposed to asbestos in Italy. We evaluated the potential of our proposal through a series of simulations. We then compared our approach with traditional methods that use exposure proxy variables.