Colin M Fischbacher <[email protected]> asks about -dstdize-:
> I'm using Stata 8. I think there is a problem with -dstdize-, or I'm
> overlooking something. In short, if you use an external reference
> population to directly standardise rates by age and sex (as in the
> example on page 291, vol 1 of the manual), the resulting standardised
> rates are half of what they should be.
>
> The sum of the weights for the standard population distribution (the
> column of output headed P) should total to 1, but when you adjust for
> age and sex it totals only to 0.5 (or the proportion for the sex being
> tabulated) Here is an example:
>
> use http://www.stata-press.com/data/r8/hbp
> gen pop=1
> dstdize hbp pop age_group sex, by(race sex) using (test_stan) print
>
> <output ommitted>
>
> The proportion of females in the 25-29 age group in the reference
> population is 0.30 (not 0.154) and the adjusted number of cases should
> be 0.95 (not 0.5) and the adjusted rate 0.0158, not 0.0081. Is this a
> bug or my mistake?
The confusion here is caused by the fact the -sex- variable is being used as a
population identifier and a stratum identifier. -dstdize- does not check to
prevent this, but maybe it should.
--Jeff
[email protected]
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