title: [Comparison of observed and expected person-years: a simulated approach].
abstract: In Epidemiology, no simple test is available for comparing an observed number of exposed person-years with an expected number. The number of person-years is a sum of lengths of stays which is not normally distributed under the null hypothesis. A method is proposed and an example is given. The objective was to study in the French territory of New-Caledonia the relationship between past places of living and occurrence of respiratory cancers. The total observed number of person-years in a zone, among cases, was compared to an expected distribution, based on censuses and controlling for two confounding factors, period of stay and ethnic group. Different methods are compared: a test based on a simulated distribution, and parametric approaches with normality assumption. If the number of cases is small, the simulation test seems to be the best approach.
authors.affiliation: INSERM Unité 88, Paris.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Luce
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Leclerc
authors.forename: J F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Chastang
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Goldberg
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D015986:Confounding Factors, Epidemiologic; D004777:Environment; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D005006:Ethnicity; D006801:Humans; D009510:New Caledonia / Q000453:epidemiology; D012142:Respiratory Tract Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology*
vernacular_title: Comparaison d'années-personnes observées et attendues; une approche par simulation.