Abstract
Two-phase medical surveys, in which a large sample is assessed with an inexpensive screening instrument and a subsample is selected for a more thorough diagnostic evaluation, appear to have great merit in the epidemiolgoic study of certain rare disorders. We present the optimal design of two-phase surveys when resources are fixed and when 100% of those screened positive in the first phase must be included in the second-phase evaluation. We go on to examine the relative efficiency of this two-phase design compared to a single-phase design in which all resources are used in a survey that employs the diagnostic evaluation. Given information on the accuracy of the screen and the prevalence of the disorder, the utility of the two-phase design depends on the relative cost of the screening to the diagnostic assessments.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 549-555 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Biometrics |
Volume | 45 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1989 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Statistics and Probability
- General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
- General Immunology and Microbiology
- General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
- Applied Mathematics