A methodologic study was conducted in Iowa to evaluate the quality of informationon pesticide use provided by farmers and their spouses. Included in this project was anassessment of the amount of detail farmers could provide in interviews regardingagricultural use of pesticides and to evaluate whether a volunteer or probe interviewingtechnique elicited the best response. Interviews were conducted with 203 farmers toobtain information on type, amount, and timing of pesticides used. In the interviewsfarmers first volunteered the names of pesticides they had used. Interviewers thenprobed for possible use of pesticides not already mentioned. Probing yielded aconsiderable number of additional positive responses, e.g., from 12% of the totalnumber of farmers reporting use of atrazine to 89% for chlordane. This indicates thatquestionnaires based on an approach where farmers volunteered the names ofindividual chemicals used, i.e., provided names without interviewer prompts, are likelyto be less complete. Many farmers were able to provide information on amount ofpesticide purchased, application rate employed, and acres treated. A larger proportion,however, provided dont know responses to the questions about amount of pesticidepurchased (6% to 27%) and amount of active ingredient used (7% to 20%).
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Blair et al. (1997) studied this question.