Skip Navigation

This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Kalsbeek, W. D.
Right arrow Articles by Morris, P. D.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Kalsbeek, W. D.
Right arrow Articles by Morris, P. D.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

American Journal of Epidemiology Vol. 135, No. 5: 552-563
Copyright © 1992 by The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health

research-article

Choosing Criteria to Screen for Specific Medical Conditions from Nonspecific Sources: An Application to Injury Surveillance

William D. Kalsbeek1,, J .Michael Bowling2 and Peter D. Morris3

1Survey Research Unit, Department of Biostatistics, and the Injury Prevention Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hid Chapel Hill, NC
2Division of Statistics and Information Services, Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources Raleigh, NC
3Division of Epidemiology, Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources Raleigh, NC

Reprint requests to Dr. William D Kalsbeek, Survey Research Unit, Department of Biostatistics, Bolin Creek East, 730 Airport Road, Suite 107, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-2400

The authors examine an approach for identifying which criteria to use when screening for persons with a relatively rare medical condition. They considered various subsets of an inclusive set of criteria by examining the statistical effectiveness per unit cost of deleting various criteria using three statistical measures of effectiveness. An application to injury surveillance, where categories of the patient's chief complaint were used for screening via emergency department logs, illustrates two implications of the approach. First, deletion priorities may differ somewhat by effectiveness measure. When using sensitivity to measure statistical efficiency, the tendency is first to drop the larger categories with the smaller proportions of injury. On the other hand, using specificity to gauge effectiveness calls for large categories with the highest injury rates to be deleted first; while for a measure of effectiveness derived from relative bias, the tendency is first to drop those categories with the fewest injuries. Second, an unequivocal set of criteria may not emerge, thus forcing one to decide among options. The authors suggest several rationales for making this decision.

cost benefit analysis; mass screening; sampling studies; wounds and injuries


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.