Polednak A P
Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation, Connecticut Department of Public Health, Hartford 06134, USA.
Ethn Dis. 2001 Winter;11(1):24-9.
This study assessed the agreement in coding of race and Hispanic ethnicity for the same patients in a hospital discharge database and another database.
Race-ethnicity coding was examined for 72,276 cancer patients discharged from Connecticut hospitals (1992-1997) who were linked with the statewide cancer registry that included information on birthplace (for 76% of patients) and surname (for all patients). Surnames in the cancer registry were also linked with a list of Spanish surnames, to improve ascertainment of ethnicity among patients of probable Hispanic origin.
Kappa coefficients (kappa) indicated substantial agreement (beyond that expected by chance) for White (kappa = .74) and Black (kappa = .93) race, Hispanic ethnicity (kappa = .73) and non-Hispanic White race-ethnicity (kappa = .83) categories. Kappa was moderate (ie, .52) for the Asian-Pacific Islander race category. Only 42% of Asian-Pacific Islanders and 62% of Hispanics in the cancer registry were similarly coded in the discharge database.
Although both databases are imperfect, the findings suggest that ascertainment of certain racial-ethnic groups in hospital discharge databases could be improved if birthplace and surname were available.
本研究评估了在医院出院数据库和另一个数据库中，对同一患者的种族和西班牙裔种族编码的一致性。
对从康涅狄格州医院出院的72276名癌症患者（1992 - 1997年）的种族 - 族裔编码进行了检查，这些患者与全州癌症登记处相关联，该登记处包含出生地信息（76%的患者）和姓氏信息（所有患者）。癌症登记处中的姓氏还与一份西班牙姓氏列表相关联，以提高对可能具有西班牙裔血统患者的族裔确定。
卡帕系数（kappa）表明，在白人（kappa = 0.74）、黑人（kappa = 0.93）种族、西班牙裔族裔（kappa = 0.73）和非西班牙裔白人种族 - 族裔（kappa = 0.83）类别中存在高度一致性（超出偶然预期）。亚太岛民种族类别的卡帕系数为中等（即0.52）。癌症登记处中只有42%的亚太岛民和62%的西班牙裔在出院数据库中的编码相同。
尽管两个数据库都存在缺陷，但研究结果表明，如果有出生地和姓氏信息，医院出院数据库中某些种族 - 族裔群体的确定情况可能会得到改善。
