Spatial clustering of the failure to geocode and its implications for the detection of disease clustering

Geocoding a study population as completely as possible is an important data assimilation component of many spatial epidemiologic studies. Unfortunately, complete geocoding is rare in practice. The failure of a substantial proportion of study subjects' addresses to geocode has consequences for s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Statistics in medicine Vol. 27; no. 21; pp. 4254 - 4266
Main Authors: Zimmerman, Dale L., Fang, Xiangming, Mazumdar, Soumya
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Chichester, UK John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 20.09.2008
Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
Subjects:
Algorithms
Cluster Analysis
Computer Simulation
Disease
disease clustering
Epidemiologic Methods
Epidemiology
geocoding
Geographic Information Systems
Interpolation
Simulation
spatial cluster detection
Carroll County Iowa
ISSN:0277-6715, 1097-0258
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Geocoding a study population as completely as possible is an important data assimilation component of many spatial epidemiologic studies. Unfortunately, complete geocoding is rare in practice. The failure of a substantial proportion of study subjects' addresses to geocode has consequences for spatial analyses, some of which are not yet fully understood. This article explicitly demonstrates that the failure to geocode can be spatially clustered, and it investigates the implications of this for the detection of disease clustering. A data set of more than 9000 ground‐truthed addresses from Carroll County, Iowa, which was geocoded via a standard address matching and street interpolation algorithm, is used for this purpose. Through simulation of disease processes at these addresses, the authors show that spatial clustering of geocoding failure has no effect on the marginal power to detect spatial disease clustering if the likelihood of disease is independent of the failure to geocode, but that power is substantially reduced if disease likelihood and geocoding failure are positively associated. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliography:Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - No. 3 R01 EH000056-01S1
ark:/67375/WNG-93TX1VNN-T
ArticleID:SIM3288
istex:20E9B9F636303F3006348AD583A6872CFB1618CE
Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH)
University of Iowa - No. 5886CAR02
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ISSN:0277-6715
1097-0258
DOI:10.1002/sim.3288