Analysis of Health Surveys

Rating:
Summary: unique book by two applied statisticians
Review: Ed Korn and Barry Graubard are two statisticians in the health industry with strong statistical training. This is a very practical and specialized book which deals strictly with health surveys. Several national surveys are discussed. Many of the standard survey sampling topics including stratified random sampling and sampling proportional to size are covered. In addition modern ways for estimating variances including jackknife, balanced half-sample replication and bootstrap are covered. Beyond the standard topics there are topics in survival analysis that are included. Other practical issues such as weighted versus unweighted estimates and the use of imputation methods are included. They also include many exercises at the end of the chapters to make the book suitable for a course on the subject. Whole chapters are dedicated to interesting and unique topics such as "Analysis of Longitudinal Surveys", Chapter 7, "Analyses using Multiple Surveys", Chapter 8, and "Population-Based Case-Control Studies", Chapter 9. Appendix A gives detailed descriptions of the surveys analyzed in the book. It also contains a wealth of useful references from teh statistical literature. A good book for practitioners which does not require very high level mathematics.

Rating:
Summary: Analysis of Health Surveys
Review: This is a very good textbook. There is no complex mathematcis, and a lot of real examples and exercises can help readers to understand the materials covered in the book. But it is too simple if it is used as a professional reference. It tries to cover basic survey methodology, weighting, variance estimation, cross-sectional analyses, longitudinal surveys and case-control studies in only such a small book (less than 400 pages). Definately, it can not touch advanced parts of these areas. Anyway, it is very good for college students. You can learn a lot of very interesting ideas though this book even you do not have any knowledge about survey sampling and biostatistics.