Accuracy of short-term recall of age at menarche

This study was conducted as part of the third annual follow-up of a cohort of 657 girls to test the accuracy of short-term recall of age at menarche. During the first and second annual follow-ups of the cohort, 101 girls had reported menarche. We sent questionnaires to these subjects at the third annual follow-up and asked them to recall the month and year of their menarche. Eighty-eight respondents returned their questionnaires with the relevant information. Overall. 59·1% of the respondents were able to recall their menarche with the exact month and year. The mean recall interval was 430 days. When the data were grouped by the interval of recall, higher accuracy was observed with a shorter interval of recall. With a mean interval of recall of 323 days, 66·1% of the subjects were able to recall their menarche correctly, whereas with a mean interval of 649 days, only 44·8% of the subjects were able to recall correctly.