ESTIMATING PREVALENCE FROM THE RESULTS OF A SCREENING TEST
- 1 January 1978
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in American Journal of Epidemiology
- Vol. 107 (1) , 71-76
- https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a112510
Abstract
This paper deals with some basic properties of screening tests. Such tests, purport to separate people with disease from people without. Minimal criteria for such a process to be a test are discussed. Various ways of judging the goodness of a test are examined. A common use of tests Is to estimate prevalence of disease; frequency of positive tests Is shown to be a bad estimate, and the necessary adjustments are given.Keywords
This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Charlottesville Blood-Pressure Survey. Value of repeated blood-pressure measurementsJAMA, 1976
- Hypertension screening of 1 million Americans. Community Hypertension Evaluation Clinic (CHEC) program, 1973 through 1975JAMA, 1976
- Decreasing Reliability of Acid-Fast Smear Techniques for Detection of TuberculosisAnnals of Internal Medicine, 1975
- COMPARISON OF A SCREENING TEST AND A REFERENCE TEST IN EPIDEMIOLOGIC STUDIESAmerican Journal of Epidemiology, 1966