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CONFIDENCE INTERVALS FOR DIRECTLY STANDARDIZED RATES: A METHOD BASED ON THE GAMMA DISTRIBUTION
Author(s) -
FAY MICHAEL P.,
FEUER ERIC J.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
statistics in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.996
H-Index - 183
eISSN - 1097-0258
pISSN - 0277-6715
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-0258(19970415)16:7<791::aid-sim500>3.0.co;2-#
Subject(s) - confidence interval , poisson distribution , statistics , confidence distribution , robust confidence intervals , cdf based nonparametric confidence interval , population , mathematics , standardized rate , credible interval , distribution (mathematics) , demography , mathematical analysis , sociology
We offer an approximation to central confidence intervals for directly standardized rates, where we assume that the rates are distributed as a weighted sum of independent Poisson random variables. Like a recent method proposed by Dobson, Kuulasmaa, Eberle and Scherer, our method gives exact intervals whenever the standard population is proportional to the study population. In cases where the two populations differ non‐proportionally, we show through simulation that our method is conservative while other methods (the Dobson et al . method and the approximate bootstrap confidence method) can be liberal. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.