Estimate the magnitude of misattribution in death certification and to determine whether misattribution could explain temporal trends in New Mexico prostate cancer mortality.
Investigators retrospectively reviewed medical records to classify cause of death for men with prostate cancer who died in New Mexico in either 1985 or 1995. The investigator-assigned cause of death, either prostate cancer or another cause, was compared with the New Mexico Bureau of Vital Statistics' (BVS) assignment. Net misattribution was the difference between BVS and investigators in the number of deaths attributed to prostate cancer relative to the number attributed by investigators.
Concordance for death certification between BVS and investigators was higher in 1995 (95.8%) than 1985 (85.1%), p <0.01, but net misattribution was higher in 1995 (16.8% vs. 1.9%). During this time, the crude prostate cancer mortality rate in New Mexico increased 33.5%, from 18.5 to 24.7 per 100,000. However, after adjusting for misattribution, mortality increased only 15.9%, from 18.2 to 21.1 per 100,000.
Net misattribution in death certification was higher in 1995 than 1985. The adjusted increase in crude mortality rates was substantially less than the observed increase, suggesting that misattribution explained about half of the observed increase.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 01 January 2007.
All research outputs
#9,515,738
of 27,781,301 outputs
Outputs from Annals of Epidemiology
#1,013
of 2,164 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#21,914
of 58,748 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Annals of Epidemiology
#6
of 11 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 27,781,301 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 42nd percentile – i.e., 42% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,164 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 16.9. This one is in the 34th percentile – i.e., 34% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 58,748 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 10th percentile – i.e., 10% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 11 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 1st percentile – i.e., 1% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
