American Journal of Epidemiology Vol. 152, No. 2 : 107-111
Copyright © 2000 by The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health
PRACTICE OF EPIDEMIOLOGY |
Comparison of National Death Index and World Wide Web Death Searches
1 Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA.
2 Division of Preventive Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
3 Division of Epidemiology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA.
The authors used the National Death Index and a World Wide Web Internet site that searches the Social Security Administration master files of deaths to determine the mortality status of 1,000 US subjects from the College Alumni Health Study. Subjects were classified as definitely dead, possibly dead, or presumed alive. Of 246 definite deaths pinpointed by the National Death Index, the World Wide Web identified 94.7% of them. Of 438 men presumed alive according to the National Death Index, the World Wide Web identified 97.5% of them. However, the World Wide Web was not useful for identifying deaths of women. This study demonstrated that the World Wide Web may provide an alternative, inexpensive method of determining the mortality status of subjects in relatively small epidemiologic studies.
computer systems; epidemiologic methods; Internet; mortality
Abbreviations: NDI, National Death Index; WWW, World Wide Web
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