HTH 450 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Age Adjustment
Document Summary
We can use mortality data to compare two or more populations, or the same population during different time periods. We know that different groups have different risk for dying. Sometimes overall mortality rates (crude or unadjusted mortality) can mask these differences. We need to adjust for the different ages to make a better comparison. A rate of morbidity or mortality in a population in which statistical procedures have been applied to permit fair comparisons across populations by removing the effect of the differences in the composition of various populations. Step 1: split up each population into different age groups and then calculate the mortality rate for each age group. Step 2: apply our mortality rates from our two populations to the age distribution of a third standard population. Step 3: sum the total population and expected deaths from each and calculate the new mortality rate for each population (# of deaths/ population).
