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RESEARCH PRODUCT

A comparison of some simple methods to identify geographical areas with excess incidence of a rare disease such as childhood leukaemia

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SUMMARY Six statistics are compared in a simulation study for their ability to identify geographical areas with a known excess incidence of a rare disease. The statistics are the standardized incidence ratio, the empirical Bayes method of Clayton and Kaldor, Poisson probability, a statistic based on the B statistics are compared for the proportion of true high-risk areas identi"ed in the top 1 per cent and 10 per cent of ranked areas. One of the PW statistics performed consistently well under all circumstances, although the results for the BT statistic were marginally better when only the top 1 per cent of ranked areas was considered. The standardized incidence ratio performed consistently worst. Copyright ( 1999 National Radiological Protection Board.