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Carol Rice,¹ Linda S. Birnbaum,² James Cogliano,³ Kathryn Mahaffey,⁴ Larry Needham,⁵ Walter J. Rogan,⁶ and Frederick S. vom Saal⁷

¹Environmental and Industrial Hygiene Division, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA; ²Experimental Toxicology Division, National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA; ³Quantitative Risk Methods Group, National Center for Environmental Assessment, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, USA; ⁴Exposure Assessment, Coordination and Policy Division, Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, USA; ⁵National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; ⁶National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA; ⁷Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, Missouri, USA

Abstract
In studies designed to evaluate exposure-response relationships in children's development from conception through puberty, multiple factors that affect the generation of meaningful exposure metrics must be considered. These factors include multiple routes of exposure ; the timing, frequency, and duration of exposure ; need for qualitative and quantitative data ; sample collection and storage protocols ; and the selection and documentation of analytic methods. The methods for exposure data collection and analysis must be sufficiently robust to accommodate the a priori hypotheses to be tested, as well as hypotheses generated from the data. A number of issues that must be considered in study design are summarized here. Key words: developing child, endocrine disruptors, environmental epidemiology, exposure assessment. Environ Health Perspect 111:1683-1690 (2003) . doi:10.1289/ehp.5798 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 18 March 2003]