Vitalnet Age-Adjusted BRFSS Percents
Rationale:
To compare risk or prevalence between populations with different age structures,
it is
generally recommended to adjust for age.
Age-adjusted rates
are used to
compare death rates between populations.
When possible, Healthy People 2010 and 2020 Objectives with BRFSS data
use age-adjustment.
Example:
Without age-adjustment, analyses can be misleading or incorrect.
Here is a real-world example:
-
Percent Yes (Not Age-Adjusted) (Not AA)
-
Percent Yes (Is Age-Adjusted) (Is AA)
Summary table showing the differences:
| Ever had diabetes (excluding pregnancy)? |
| Race |
Weighted % Yes |
| Not AA |
Is AA |
| White |
7.1% |
6.4% |
| Black |
12.1% |
12.9% |
| Hispanic |
8.0% |
11.4% |
If age-adjusted, Hispanic (11.4%) - White (6.4%) = 5.0%
If not age-adjusted, Hispanic (8.0%) - White (7.1%) = 0.9%
Status:
We have added age-adjusted percents to
Vitalnet Table and Map Maker.
This lets you quickly and reliably do BRFSS age-adjusted analyses, with:
- No programming knowledge required.
- Assurance of correct, fully documented results.
- Publication-ready results produced in about a minute.
Verification:
By comparing with (the few) existing age-adjusted analyses from other sources,
we verified Vitalnet is producing correct BRFSS age-adjusted percents.
Confidence intervals:
We plan to add confidence intervals (using Jackknife replication) to the BRFSS age-adjusted percents,
within the next few months.
Population standard:
We use distribution #10 from
Klein and Schoenborn (2001).
Other standards can be built in as you specify.
Contact us if you have suggestions / comments,
or if you would like to discuss licensing BRFSS Table and Map Maker to make better use of your data.