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How do you determine if there is a statistical difference between age-specific/age-adjusted rates?
Message posted by kat on October 19, 2000 at 12:00 AM (ET)
I have a dataset with number of cases and person-years for each age group and each race.
I want to compare the age-specific rates between whites and blacks.
I also want to compare the age-adjusted rates between whites and blacks.
How can I tell if there is a statistical difference between whites and blacks?
How do I create a p-value or confidence interval to tell me if the two populations are statistically different?
Thank you!
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Re: How do you determine if there is a statistical difference between age-specific/age-adjusted rates?
Message posted by SOF on October 20, 2000 at 12:00 AM (ET)
Statistical analysis is based on both data and assumptions or previous knowledge of the population. You must make assuptions about your populations to have conclusions. An age adjusted result is fundamentaly different from a result that is not age adjusted. This problem is similar to using seasonally adjusted economic data.
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