System and methodology for collecting autobiographical data concerning use of consumer products or exposures to substances

A method of collecting retrospective autobiographical data from a respondent, comprising:

• eliciting from the respondent information concerning one or more aspects of the respondent's life for a predefined period of the respondent's life;
• and
• entering the elicited information into a timeline including the predefined period to construct a visual reference of the elicited information,
• wherein the aspects of the respondent's life include consumer product use or substance exposure over at least a portion of the predefined period, and the eliciting step comprises displaying to the respondent source-identifying features corresponding to different sources of relevant consumer products or substances to assist the respondent in recalling the source or sources of the consumer product the respondent used or substances the respondent was exposed to at various times during the predefined period.

An article comprising a computer readable medium having software stored thereon including instructions for causing a computer aided interviewing system, including a data storage system, a processor system, an interviewer display system, an interviewer input system, and a respondent display system, to perform a series of steps comprising:

• retrieve selected question data from the data storage system with the processor system;
• the processor system generating at the interviewer display system, and using the retrieved question data, prompts to be used by an interviewer for eliciting from the respondent information concerning one or more aspects of the respondent's life for a predefined period of the respondent's life, including consumer product use or substance exposure over at least a portion of the predefined period;
• retrieving selected source-identifying feature data from the data storage system with the processor system;
• and
• the processor system generating at the respondent display system, and using the retrieved source-identifying feature data, displays of source-identifying features corresponding to different sources of relevant consumer products or substances to assist the respondent in recalling the source or sources of the consumer product the respondent used or substances the respondent was exposed to at various times during the predefined period.

A computer-aided interviewing system for facilitating the collection of retrospective autobiographical data from a respondent, comprising:

• a data storage system storing question data and source-identifying feature data;
• a processor system for retrieving data from said data storage system, said processor system being constructed and arranged to:
• retrieve question storage data from said data storage system and generate displayable prompts, the prompts to be used by an interviewer for eliciting from a respondent information concerning one or more aspects of the respondent's life for a predefined period of the respondent's life, including consumer product use or substance exposure over at least a portion of the predefined period;
• and
• retrieve source-identifying feature data from said data storage system and generate displays of source-identifying features corresponding to different sources of relevant consumer products or substances to assist the respondent in recalling the source or sources of the consumer product the respondent used or substance the respondent was exposed to at various times during the predefined period;
• an interviewer display system in communication with said processor system and constructed and arranged to display to an interviewer said prompts generated by said processor system;
• and
• a respondent display system in communication with said processor system and constructed and arranged to display to a respondent said displays of source-identifying features generated by said processor system.