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 how the Genital Herpes of mothers and one of the prenatal care indicator: Less than 5 prenatal care visits, changed in Richland County in the past four years. 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, age group, marital status, county, or characteristics. For this example, Birth Characteristic was chosen.

STEP 2

Step Two defines the variable whose levels will occupy the columns of the table. Users can select year, race, age group, or marital status. For this example, year 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 2001 to 2004.

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 race, age, and marital status, this is the step where we would define those levels.

STEP 5

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

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 counties. For this example, Richland County was selected.

STEP 7

Step Seven specifies particular birth characteristics of interest. If characteristics is chosen as the row variable, then multiple birth characteristics can be selected here. If characteristics is not the row variable, only one characteristic can be selected in this step. For this example, we were interested in Genital Herpes (mother) and Mom's PNC: less than 5 PNC visits, so we selected them both.

STEP 8

Step Eight specifies the numeric output for the table. Users can select from frequencies only, frequencies and rates, frequencies and column percents, or frequencies and row percents. Since we are interested in the frequency and the possible trend in rates, we selected Frequencies and rates.

STEP 9

If we want to obtain the 95% or 99% confidence interval for the rates, we can make the selection here. This step is not activated unless user selects Frequencies and rates in Step 8. In this example, we selected No Confidence Intervals.

STEP 10

If multiple years are selected as the column variable, we can specify different output presentation formats such as table, trendline and/or barchart. In this example, we selected Table only.

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 variable 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.

INTERPRETATION OF DATA

Interpretation of the table is the user's responsibility. Thorough labels are provided to make interpretation more intuitive. In some situations, footnotes are provided to help users understand the statistics better.

WHEN USING THE TABLE

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