SpatialEpi (version 1.2.8)

eBayes: Empirical Bayes Estimates of Relative Risk

Description

The computes empirical Bayes estimates of relative risk of study region with n areas, given observed and expected numbers of counts of disease and covariate information.

Usage

eBayes(Y, E, Xmat = NULL)

Value

A list with 5 elements:

RR

the ecological relative risk posterior mean estimates

RRmed

the ecological relative risk posterior median estimates

beta

the MLE's of the regression coefficients

alpha

the MLE of negative binomial dispersion parameter

SMR

the standardized mortality/morbidity ratio Y/E

Arguments

Y

a length n vector of observed cases

E

a length n vector of expected number of cases

Xmat

n x p dimension matrix of covariates

References

Clayton D. and Kaldor J. (1987) Empirical Bayes estimates of age-standardized relative risks for use in disease mapping. Biometrics, 43, 671--681

Examples

data(scotland)
data <- scotland$data
x <- data$AFF
Xmat <- cbind(x,x^2)
results <- eBayes(data$cases,data$expected,Xmat)
scotland.map <- scotland$spatial.polygon
mapvariable(results$RR, scotland.map)