Fett M J
Am J Public Health. 1985 Dec;75(12):1385-8. doi: 10.2105/ajph.75.12.1385.
To measure the quality of vital status data in a retrospective cohort study of mortality among former servicemen of the Vietnam Conflict era, test subjects of independently determined vital status were included among study subjects during vital status ascertainment procedures. This allowed for differentiation between vital status "unknown" and incorrect assignment of vital status, and enabled measurement of the quality of both live and deceased vital status data. Four parameters based on sensitivity and specificity were used to express the quality of vital status data. The deceased specificity rate was 100 per cent, the deceased sensitivity rate was 95.7 per cent, the live specificity rate was 98.5 per cent, and the live sensitivity rate was 95.4 per cent. Using models of misclassification, the estimated death rate was found to be most sensitive to changes in the deceased specificity rate, indicating that emphasis should be given to minimizing incorrect ascertainment of truly alive subjects as deceased when developing vital status ascertainment procedures.
在一项关于越南冲突时期退伍军人死亡率的回顾性队列研究中，为了衡量生命状态数据的质量，在生命状态确定程序中，将独立确定生命状态的测试对象纳入研究对象之中。这使得能够区分生命状态“未知”和生命状态的错误赋值，并能够衡量存活和死亡生命状态数据的质量。基于敏感性和特异性的四个参数被用来表达生命状态数据的质量。死亡特异性率为100%，死亡敏感性率为95.7%，存活特异性率为98.5%，存活敏感性率为95.4%。使用错误分类模型发现，估计死亡率对死亡特异性率的变化最为敏感，这表明在制定生命状态确定程序时，应着重尽量减少将真正存活的对象错误确定为死亡。
