SCAN users should ask themselves, "What question am I trying to answer?" or "What am I researching?" Answering these questions will help the user to determine which variables should be selected during each step of the table creation process.

For this example, we were interested in seeing South Carolina's outcome by race breakdown and rates for estimated pregnancy in 2002. In order to generate the above table that answers our research interests, the following step-by-step process was followed on the "Create a Table" page.

STEP 1

Step One defines the variable whose levels will occupy the rows of the table. Users can select year, race, marital status, education, maternal age, region, or outcome. For this example, outcome was chosen.

STEP 2

Step Two defines the variable whose levels will occupy the columns of the table. Users can select year, race, marital status, education, maternal age, region, or outcome. For this example, race was chosen.

STEP 3

Step Three specifies the years of interest. If year is the chosen row or column variable, the years you select in this step will occupy the rows or columns of your table. If year is neither a row nor column variable in your table, all years selected in this step will be summed together and shown in your table. For this example, we selected a single year, 2002.

STEP 4

Step Four is an optional step. In this example, we did not make any specifications here. If we were interested in seeing this same information for a particular combination of maternal race, maternal age, marital status, and education this is the step where those levels would be defined.

STEP 5

Step Five specifies the output level for the table. Users can select zip codes, counties or DHEC regions. If zip codes are chosen no rates will be available due to the population data being limited to counties. For our example, we select counties.

STEP 6

Step Six defines the geographic area to tally for your table. Users can select the entire state, a single county, or any group of up to 15 regions. For this example, we did not make any changes to this step; we used the default setting for the All Counties in South Carolina. To select a county simply click on the chosen county in the "Region" Box and then use the down arrow button so that the selected counties move to the "Selected Region" box, or double click on the chosen county. Multiple counties can be selected only when region is chosen as a row or column variable.

STEP 7

Step Seven specifies particular outcome of interest. If outcome is chosen in either Step One or Step Two, then multiple outcomes can be selected here. Otherwise, only one outcome can be selected at a time in this step. For our example, we were interested in live births, fetal deaths, abortions, and pregnancies, so we selected all four of them.

STEP 8

Step Eight specifies the numeric output for the table. Users can select from frequencies only, frequencies and rates, frequencies and percents by column, or frequencies and percents by row. For this example, Frequencies and Rates were selected.

STEP 9

Step Nine allows the user to select the output presentation format. The user can select any of the listed options: Table, Trendline and/or Bar Chart (Table is always generated).Some options will not be appropriate depending on the variables that users have selected in the previous steps. For this example Table was selected.

SUBMIT REQUEST

Submit the request after completing the step-by-step process. An output table will be promptly returned to the user based upon the specifications. Once the table is returned, the user can view, print, or download the table. The rotate option on the table allows the row and column variables to rotate. All specifications from the step-by-step process are defined in the table's title and labeling. Double-check this information to make sure you've obtained the information to answer your research objective.

Trendline and Bar Chart

In order to generate a Trendline the user must select Year as a column variable in step 2, and must also select consecutive years in step 3. Below is an example of trendline and bar chart. Indicator is still used as a row variable but the column variable this time was Year and in step 3 we selected four consecutive years: 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001.

INTERPRETATION OF DATA

Interpretation of the table is the user's responsibility. Thorough labels are provided to make interpretation more intuitive. For this example, the estimated pregnancies for the year 2001 were higher for blacks, and other races than for whites. The fetal death rate for whites and others is much lower than blacks. For every 1000 black women in South Carolina in the year 2001, 16.6 have a reportable fetal death as compared to 6.4 for whites.

WHEN USING THE TABLE

Please reference any data extracted from the SCAN system as follows:
Source: Division of Biostatistics and Health GIS, PHSIS, SC DHEC.