A Common Wealth of
Health Statistics provide information for understanding, monitoring, improving and planning the use of resources to improve the lives of people, provide services and promote their well being.
The following tutorials describes the range of available health statistics, identifies their sources and helps you understand how to use information about their structure as you search.
Statistics – the practice or science of collecting and analyzing numerical data in large quantities
Data – raw numbers collected together for reference or analysis
Vital Statistics – Statistics concerning the important events in human life, i.e. birth, death, marriage, etc.
Correlation – mutual relationship or connection between two or more things
Rate – expresses the frequency with which an event occurs in a defined population in a specified period of time
Incidence – the proportion of new cases of the target disorder in the population at risk during a specified time interval
Prevalence – the proportion of the total population who have a particular health-related condition.
Sources:
1. Strauss SE, Richardson WS, Glasziou P, Haynes RB, eds. Evidence-Based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach EBM. 3rd Ed. ed. Edinburgh: Elsevier; 2004.
2. Kielhofner G. Descriptive quantitative design. In: Kielhofner G, ed. Research in Occupational Therapy. 1st ed. Philadelphia: F.A. Davis Company; 2006:58.
This project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Contract No. HHS-N-276-2011-00004-C with the University of Maryland Baltimore.