Assessing Community Variation and Randomness in Public Health Indicators

Details

• Personal Author:
  Acion L ; Arndt S ; Capers K ; Diallo O
• Description:
  Background: Evidence-based health indicators are vital to needs-based programming and epidemiological planning. Agencies frequently make programming funds available to local jurisdictions based on need. The use of objective indicators to determine need is attractive but assumes that selection of communities with the highest indicators reflects something other than random variability from sampling error. Methods: The authors compare the statistical performance of two heterogeneity measures applied to community differences that provide tests for randomness and measures of the percentage of true community variation, as well as estimates of the true variation. One measure comes from the meta-analysis literature and the other from the simple Pearson chi-square statistic. Simulations of populations and an example using real data are provided. Results: The measure based on the simple chi-square statistic seems superior, offering better protection against Type I errors and providing more accurate estimates of the true community variance. Conclusions: The heterogeneity measure based on Pearson's X2 should be used to assess indices. Methods for improving poor indices are discussed. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Community Health Services Epidemiology Occupational Health Public Health Quality Control Safety Surveys And Questionnaires
• Keywords:
  Community Based Community Health Data Processing Diversity Health Standards Health Surveys Mathematical Models Models Performance Tests Public Health Quality Control Standards Statistical Analysis Statistical Quality Control Surveillance

  More +
• ISSN:
  1478-7954
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Iowa ; OSHA Region 7
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  3
• Volume:
  9
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20062144
• Citation:
  Popul Health Metr 2011 Feb; 9:3
• Contact Point Address:
  Stephan Arndt, Department of Psychiatry, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, USA
• Email:
  stephan-arndt@uiowa.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2011
• Performing Organization:
  University of Iowa
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  Population Health Metrics
• End Date:
  20290630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:51620bff013ece4145235ddabfda15e46164d24d9072bb937f8721d6dba1bd40b9fc95f875d25e01c73a0acab742caba8fc5d6f01443fbf02a2b873d072d6778
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/225451/cdc_225451_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 2.81 MB ]