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AJPH First Look, published online ahead of print Oct 3, 2006
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November 2006, Vol 96, No. 11 | American Journal of Public Health 1899-1901
© 2006 American Public Health Association
DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2006.094870

LETTER

YANG ET AL. RESPOND

Quanhe Yang, PhD, Sander Greenland, DrPH and W. Dana Flanders, MD, ScD

Quanhe Yang is with the Division of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Ga. Sander Greenland is with the Departments of Epidemiology and Statistics, University of California, Los Angeles. W. Dana Flanders is with the Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga.

Correspondence: Request for reprints should be sent to Quanhe Yang, PhD, Division of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Rd, Mail Stop E-86, Atlanta, GA 30333 (e-mail: qay0@cdc.gov).

Because this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

We thank Schempf and Becker for pointing out a deficiency in our presentation, although we disagree with their solution. In fact, we were aware of the alternative standards they cite and rejected them as inappropriate. Although researchers are often taught otherwise, the choice of standard distributions is not arbitrary and should not be based on symmetry or other mathematical considerations. Rather, the choice of standard distribution should be based on queries of contextual interest about outcomes under alternative histories for a well-specified target population.1,2 Conversely, the standard distribution chosen for a problem implies the population and histories to which the . . . [Full Text]






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