title: Improved estimates of floating absolute risk.
abstract: Floating absolute risks are an alternative way of presenting relative risk estimates for polychotomous risk factors. Instead of choosing one level of the risk factor as a reference category, each level is assigned a 'floated' variance which describes the uncertainty in risk without reference to another level. In this paper, a method for estimating the floated variances is presented that improves on the previously proposed 'heuristic' method. The estimates may be calculated iteratively with a simple algorithm. A benchmark for validating the floated variance estimates is also proposed and an interpretation of floating confidence intervals is given.
authors.affiliation: International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France. plummer@iarc.fr
authors.forename: Martyn
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Plummer
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D006801:Humans; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*