Methodology

Data notes

For more information on the data used in this report, please follow the links in the data sources section.

Confidence intervals and statistical significance

Confidence intervals are calculated at the 95% confidence level. The “Comparison” field in the tables uses a significance level of 5%. If the “Comparison” of a measure for a county is displayed as “Lower”, it is significantly lower than the measure for the state at the 5% significance level. If it is displayed as “Higher” than the state, it is significantly higher than the measure for the state. Otherwise, it is displayed as “Similar”, and is not significantly different than the measure for the state. If the data for the measure is not available, it will be displayed as “ND”.

Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System

The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data is grouped by regions of the state. There are a total of 25 regions in the state, and each region contains one or more counties. For this report, the value of a county’s statistical measure is equal to the region’s measure in which the county is located.

Data sources

The population data in the report is from the U.S. Census Bureau for census years and from the Pennsylvania State Data Center for non-census years.

The following data in the report is from the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s data tool, EDDIE:

Birth data
Death data
Cancer data
Disease data
Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data
Hospitalization data

The health facility data in the report is from the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s annual health facility questionnaires.