GLOSSARY letters L - N: Principles of Epidemiology in Public Health Practice
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katelarkin on December 13, 2011
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Principles of Epidemiology in Public Health Practice, Third Edition
An Introduction to Applied Epidemiology and Biostatistics
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37 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 numerator | the upper portion of a fraction. |
| notifiable disease | a disease that, by law, must be reported to public health authorities upon diagnosis. |
| normal distribution | a distribution represented as a bell shape, symmetrical on both sides of the peak, which is simultaneously the mean, median, and mode, and with both tails extending to infinity. |
| normal curve | normal curve the bell-shaped curve that results when a normal distribution is graphed. |
| NHANES (the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) | a representative survey of the civilian, noninstitutionalized US population conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, designed to (1) estimate the proportion of the US population and designated groups with selected disease and risk factors; (2) monitor trends in selected behaviors, exposures, and diseases; and (3) study the associations among diet, nutrition, and health. |
| NCHS (the National Center for Health Statistics) | the US governmental organization responsible for national vital statistics and multiple national health surveys. Organizationally, NCHS is a component of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the agencies of the US Department of Health and Human Services. |
| natural history of disease | the progression of a disease process in a person from the time it begins to the time it resolves, in the absence of treatment. |
| mortality rate, sex-specific | a mortality rate among either males or females. |
| mortality rate, race/ethnic-specific | a mortality rate limited to a specified racial or ethnic group both numerator and denominator are limited to that group. |
| mortality rate, postneonatal | the mortality rate for children from age 28 days up to, but not including, 1 year. In calculating postneonatal mortality rates, the numerator is the number of deaths among this age group during a given period, and the denominator is the number of live births during the same period.. The postneonatal mortality rate is usually expressed per 1,000 live births. |
| mortality rate, neonatal | the mortality rate for children from age birth up to, but not including, 28 days. In calculating neonatal mortality rates, the numerator is the number of deaths among this age group during a given period, and the denominator is the number of live births reported during the same period. The neonatal mortality rate is usually expressed per 1,000 live births. |
| mortality rate, infant | the mortality rate for children aged <1 year, calculated as the number of deaths reported among this age group during a given period divided by the number of live births reported during the same period, and expressed per 1,000 live births. Infant mortality rate is a universally accepted indicator of the health of a nation's population and the adequacy of its health-care system. |
| mortality rate, crude | a mortality rate from all causes of death for an entire population, without adjustment. |
| mortality rate, cause-specific | the mortality rate from a specified cause, calculated as the number of deaths attributed to a specific cause during a specified time interval among a population divided by the size of the midinterval population. |
| mortality rate, age-specific | a mortality rate limited to a particular age group, calculated as the number of deaths among the age group divided by the number of persons in that age group, usually expressed per 100,000. |
| mortality rate, age-adjusted | a mortality rate that has been statistically modified to eliminate the effect of different age distributions among different populations. |
| mortality rate | a measure of the frequency of occurrence of death among a defined population during a specified time interval. |
| mortality | death. |
| morbidity | disease; any departure, subjective or objective, from a state of physiological or psychological health and well-being. |
| mode of transmission | the manner in which an agent is transmitted from its reservoir to a susceptible host (see also transmission). |
| mode | the most frequently occurring value in a set of observations. |
| midrange | the halfway point, or midpoint, in a set of observations. For the majority of data, this is calculated by adding the smallest observation and the largest observation and dividing by two. This is usually calculated as an intermediate step in determining other measures. |
| median | the measure of central location that divides a set of data into two equal parts, above and below which lie an equal number of values (see also measure of central location). |
| measurement scale | the complete range of possible values for a measurement. |
| measure of spread | a measure of the distribution of observations out from its central value. Measures of spread used in epidemiology include the interquartile range, variance, and the standard deviation. |
| measure of central location | a central value that best represents a distribution of data. Common measures of central location are the mean, median, and mode also called the measure of central tendency. |
| measure of association | a quantified relationship between exposure and a particular health problem (e.g., risk ratio, rate ratio, and odds ratio). |
| mean, geometric | the mean, or average, of a set of data measured on a logarithmic scale. |
| mean, arithmetic | the measure of central location, commonly called the average, calculated by adding all the values in a group of measurements and dividing by the number of values in the group. |
| mean | commonly called the average; it is the most common measure of central tendency. |
| map, area (shaded, choropleth) | a visual display of the geographic pattern of a health problem, in which a marker is placed on a map to indicate where each affected person lives, works, or might have been exposed. |
| logarithmic transformation | conversion of nominal or ordinal data to logarithmic data. The purpose is to examine rate of change instead of amount of change only. |
| line listing | a type of epidemiologic database, organized similar to a spreadsheet with rows and columns in which information from cases or patients are listed each column represents a variable, and each row represents an individual case or patient. |
| line graph, semilogarithmic-scale | a graph that displays patterns or trends by plotting the frequency (e.g., number, proportion, or rate) of a characteristic or event during some variable, usually time. The y-axis, measuring frequency, uses a logarithmic scale. |
| line graph, arithmetic-scale | a graph that displays patterns or trends by plotting the frequency (e.g., number, proportion, or rate) of a characteristic or event during some variable, usually time. The y-axis, measuring frequency, uses an arithmetic scale. |
| life expectancy | a statistical projection of the average number of years a person of a given age is expected to live, if current mortality rates continue to apply. |
| latency period | the time from exposure to a causal agent to onset of symptoms of a (usually noninfectious) disease (see also incubation period). |
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