The CDC Wide-ranging ONline Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER) makes many health-related datasets available to the public health community through web applications. One such available dataset is The Multiple Cause of Death data which displays county-level national mortality and population data. One of the main issues with this particular dataset is that the death counts within the age groups can be very small or equal to zero for various counties which can cause the conditional probability of death to be small or even zero. This issue causes the estimates for life expectancy within the abridged life table to be unreliable. This research utilizes the data provided by CDC WONDER, distance measures (Euclidean and discrete Hellinger distances), Metric Multidimensional Scaling, and Partitioning Around Medoids to identify patterns of life table elements among the "stable" counties within the dataset. The identification of these patterns is then used to classify the patterns which the "unstable" counties fall into. Future work will aim at borrowing from the "stable" counties, geographic and demographic information, which the "unstable" counties most closely resemble in order to better predict their life table elements, particularly life expectancies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-06212017-081429 |
| Date | 26 June 2017 |
| Creators | Curtis, Alice Elizabeth |
| Contributors | Robert E. Johnson, PhD., Thomas G. Stewart, PhD. |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-06212017-081429/ |
| Rights | restrictsix, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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