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Fu-Chih Cheng, PhD, Stacey Knight, MStat, and Larry J. Cook, MStat. Intermountain Injury Control Research Center, University of Utah, University of Utah, 615 Arapeen Drive, Suite 202, slc, UT 84108-1284, 801-587-9264, fu-chih.cheng@hsc.utah.edu
There is a
concern of incorrect reporting of seatbelt usage by occupants in motor vehicle
crash reports. There is no agreed standard statistical method to adjust for the
incorrect information when computing the seatbelt usage rate. Currently, the
seatbelt usage rate is computed as if there is no incorrect reporting of
seatbelt usage. Therefore, the obtained estimator overestimates the true
seatbelt usage. In this presentation the Bayesian seatbelt usage estimate is
introduced by using national seatbelt usage rates as the prior information.
It is
reasonable to assume the number of belted occupants, X, has a binomial
distribution with n total numbers of MVC and seatbelt usage rate p.
Let pN be the national seatbelt usage rate and pobs
(=X/n) be the observed proportion of belted occupants. It can
be shown mathematically that the seatbelt usage rate given pN
can be estimated as follow.
To evaluate the properties of the
above estimate, the simulation study was conducted. The absolute difference
between the true value and estimated seatbelt usage rate was used to measure
the quality of the estimate. The incorrect information on the observed belted
occupants was assumed at 1%, 1.5%, and 2%. The true proportions of belted
occupants and national seatbelt usage rates were examined from 0.5 to 0.9. The
result showed the Bayesian estimate outperforms the usual estimate almost in
all situations when the proportion of incorrect information is large (1.5% and
2%). Therefore the
Bayesian estimate is warranted if the incorrect reporting is somewhat greater
than 1%.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Methodology, Research
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Intermountain Injury Control Research Center
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.