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Direct standardization of incidence rates in the presence of incomplete data
Author(s) -
Emerson Scott S.,
Emerson Julia C.
Publication year - 1993
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/sim.4780120103
Subject(s) - missing data , confounding , statistics , standardization , variance (accounting) , incidence (geometry) , standardized rate , population , econometrics , computer science , medicine , mathematics , environmental health , geometry , accounting , business , operating system
When comparing the disease incidence rates for several subpopulations, epidemiologists often use direct standardization to adjust for potential confounding variables. In population‐based studies, however, the data are often incompletely classified with respect to membership in the subpopulations of interest. In such a situation, one often assumes that the cases with missing data have the same distribution as the complete cases, that is the data are missing completely at random. In this setting, we derive variance estimates for the directly standardized rates which account for the use of incomplete data. We illustrate the use of these methods with data from a study of the incidence of gastrointestinal cancer by immigrant status where birthplace data are often incomplete.