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Exploratory tools for disease mapping in geographical epidemiology
Author(s) -
Cislaghi Cesare,
Biggeri Annibale,
Braga Mario,
Lagazio Corrado,
Marchi Marco
Publication year - 1995
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.4780142108
Subject(s) - estimator , bayes' theorem , statistics , smoothing , shrinkage estimator , covariate , econometrics , epidemiology , mathematics , relative risk , computer science , medicine , bayesian probability , bias of an estimator , confidence interval , minimum variance unbiased estimator
In the present paper a new shrinkage estimator of relative risk, useful in disease mapping, is compared with the empirical and full Bayes estimators, using death certificate data for lung cancer (males and females) and breast cancer (females) 1982–1988 in the Emilia—Romagna region (Italy). The estimates are obtained averaging the relative risks obtained from recursive partitioning of the set of observed values. The number of partitions is fixed in advance and behaves as a smoothing parameter, the lower the number the higher the degree of shrinkage toward the overall mean of the observed values.