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American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access originally published online on February 27, 2009
American Journal of Epidemiology 2009 169(7):901-908; doi:10.1093/aje/kwn404
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American Journal of Epidemiology Published by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health 2009.

PRACTICE OF EPIDEMIOLOGY

The Impact on National Death Index Ascertainment of Limiting Submissions to Social Security Administration Death Master File Matches in Epidemiologic Studies of Mortality

Sigurd W. Hermansen, Michael F. Leitzmann and Arthur Schatzkin

Correspondence to Dr. Arthur Schatzkin, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Executive Plaza South 3040, 6120 Executive Blvd., Rockville, MD 20852 (e-mail: schatzka{at}mail.nih.gov).

Received for publication March 26, 2008. Accepted for publication December 8, 2008.

Although many epidemiologists use the National Death Index (NDI) as the "gold standard" for ascertainment of US mortality, high search costs per year and per subject for large cohorts warrant consideration of less costly alternatives. In this study, for 1995–2001 deaths, the authors compared matches of a random sample of 11,968 National Institutes of Health (NIH)-AARP Diet and Health Study subjects to the Social Security Administration's Death Master File (DMF) and commercial list updates (CLU) with matches of those subjects to the NDI. They examined how varying the lower limits of estimated DMF match probabilities (m scores of 0.60, 0.20, and 0.05) altered the benefits and costs of mortality ascertainment. Observed DMF/CLU ascertainment of NDI-identified decedents increased from 89.8% to 95.1% as m decreased from 0.60 (stringent) to 0.20 (less stringent) and increased further to 96.4% as m decreased to 0.05 (least stringent). At these same cutpoints, the false-match probability increased from 0.4% of the sample to 0.6% and then 2.3%. Limiting NDI cause-of-death searches to subjects found in DMF searches using less stringent match criteria, further supplemented by CLU vital status updates, improves vital status assessment while increasing substantially the cost-effectiveness of ascertaining mortality in large prospective cohort studies.

data collection; epidemiologic methods; information science; mortality; vital statistics

Abbreviations: AEMR, annual expected mortality rate; AFDR, annualized false discovery rate; CLU, commercial list update(s); NDI, National Death Index; NIH, National Institutes of Health; SSA, Social Security Administration; SSN, Social Security number


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