Frisbie W P, Forbes D, Hummer R A, Pullum S G
Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin 78712, USA.
Demography. 1998 Nov;35(4):519-27.
In a recent article (Frisbie, Forbes, and Pullum 1996) we documented racial/ethnic differences in birth outcomes according to a more fine-grained classification than has typically been employed in the demographic literature. In his commentary, van der Veen focuses on the measurement of one of the dimensions of that classification, maturity of the infant, as proxied by the fetal growth ratio. The crux of the critique is easily seen in van der Veen's statement that "all of my disagreements with Frisbie et al.'s method arise from their particular use of a postnatal standard for the assessment of intrauterine growth." Our critic misunderstands our objective: He fails to realize our interest in birth outcome, not pregnancy process, and does not perceive that our intent was to extend the research extant in both the demographic and public-health literatures in which patently postnatal (i.e., ex utero) measures are taken as outcomes interesting in their own right and/or as risk factors for infant mortality and infant and childhood morbidity. Specifically, he does recognize that we purposefully expanded our focus to include moderately compromised births to determine if they were at higher risk than the normal births with whom they are conventionally categorized. Our discussion draws on research cited in the original article, on studies cited by our critic, and on a few more recent investigations. Although we have never argued that ours is the only, or even the best approach in all cases, we try to clarify the rationale for, and adduce additional empirical evidence of, the utility of the method we used.
在最近的一篇文章中（弗里斯比、福布斯和普拉姆，1996年），我们记录了出生结局方面的种族/民族差异，所依据的分类比人口统计学文献中通常采用的分类更为精细。在他的评论中，范德维恩关注的是该分类的一个维度的测量，即婴儿成熟度，以胎儿生长比率作为代理指标。批评的关键在范德维恩的陈述中显而易见，他说“我与弗里斯比等人方法的所有分歧都源于他们在评估子宫内生长时特别使用了产后标准”。我们的批评者误解了我们的目的：他没有意识到我们关注的是出生结局，而非怀孕过程，也没有察觉到我们的意图是扩展人口统计学和公共卫生文献中已有的研究，在这些文献中，明显的产后（即出生后）测量结果本身就被视为有趣的结果和/或婴儿死亡率以及婴儿和儿童发病率的风险因素。具体而言，他确实认识到我们有意扩大了关注范围，将中度受损的出生情况包括在内，以确定它们是否比与之传统上归为一类的正常出生情况面临更高的风险。我们的讨论借鉴了原文章中引用的研究、批评者引用的研究以及一些更新的调查。尽管我们从未声称我们的方法是唯一的，甚至在所有情况下都是最好的方法，但我们试图阐明我们所使用方法的原理，并提供更多关于该方法效用的实证证据。
