“We surveyed over 9,000 boys in California and Oregon and found that vaccinated boys had a 155% greater chance of having a neurological disorder like ADHD or autism than unvaccinated boys.” – Generation Rescue
| – | Read our press release discussing the survey here. |
| – | Read an article from UPI Investigative reporter Dan Olmsted Discussing the survey: Study Sees Vaccine Risk. |
If you are interested in learning about alternative vaccine schedules, please read our section titled On Vaccines.
Methodoligy
Generation Rescue commissioned an independent opinion research firm, SurveyUSA of Verona NJ, to conduct a telephone survey in nine counties in California and Oregon. Counties were selected by Generation Rescue. Interviews were successfully completed in 11,817 households with one or more children age 4 to 17. From those 11,817 households, data on 17,674 children was gathered. Of the 17,674 children inventoried, 991 were described as being completely unvaccinated. For each unvaccinated child, a health battery was administered.
Generation Rescue chose to use telephone interviews with parents to gather data on children, so as to closely mirror the methodology the CDC uses to establish national prevalence for NDs such as ADHD and autism through their national phone survey of parent responses. Generation Rescue chose to focus on children ages 4-17 to match the age range used by CDC.
Are parent responses a reliable indicator of a child’s diagnostic status? According to Dr. Laura Schieve, co-author of the CDC’s national phone survey study, in discussing the CDC’s two phone surveys on autism prevalence, “the consistency of prevalence estimates across the two surveys supports high reliability or reproducibility of parental report of autism and reliability is one important component of validity.”
SurveyUSA is a well-known national opinion research firm with unique expertise in canvassing local communities. SurveyUSA has no vested interest in any outcome this or any survey might produce. You can see a copy of the questionnaire used in the survey here. The data the survey intended to capture included:
– Households with a child or children aged 4-17
– Whether or not that child had been vaccinated
– Whether or not that child had any one (or more) of the following diagnosis: ADD, ADHD, Asperger’s, PDD-NOS, Autism, Asthma, or Juvenile Diabetes (the final two of which were added to consider other health outcomes).
The results of the survey allowed us to compare the prevalence (what percentage of children have a particular diagnosis) to see if there was any meaningful difference between unvaccinated and vaccinated children.
The most common way to measure prevalence differences is through a calculation known as relative risk or the Risk Ratio, where we compared prevalence amongst unvaccinated children to prevalence amongst vaccinated children. So, if 5% of unvaccinated children have asthma, and 10% of vaccinated children have asthma, that represents an “RR” of 2.0 (10%/5%), or a difference of 100%. We were also able to look at the data by gender, age, and county.