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 race by sex breakdown and age-adjusted rates for Cancer deaths in 1998. 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, sex, age, county, or cause of death. For this example, race was chosen.

STEP 2

Step Two defines the variable whose levels will occupy the columns of the table. Users can select year, race, sex, age, county, or cause of death. For this example, sex 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, 1998.

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, sex and age, 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 health districts. 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 counties. For this example, we did not make any changes to this step; we used the default setting for the entire state of South Carolina.

STEP 7

Step Seven specifies particular causes of death. If causes of death is chosen in either Step One or Step Two, then multiple causes of death can be selected here. Otherwise, only one cause of death can be selected at a time in this step. For our example, we were interested in Cancer Deaths.

STEP 8

Step Eight specifies the numeric output for the table. Users can select from frequencies only, frequencies and rates, age-adjusted rates, frequencies and column percents, or frequencies and row percents. Since we are interested in obtaining age-adjusted death rates, we select frequencies and crude rates.

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. For this example, the 2000 age-adjusted Cancer death rate for white males in 1998 was 223.5 per 100,000 deaths and the 2000 age-adjusted Cancer death rate for black females in 1998 was 160.9 per 100,000 deaths.

WHEN USING THE TABLE

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