ArticleStatistics in medicine2015
A critical look at prospective surveillance using a scan statistic.
Article in Statistics in medicine, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Assessing spatial variability in observed infectious disease spread in a prospective time-space series.International journal of health geographics · 2025Article
- Daily surveillance of COVID-19 using the prospective space-time scan statistic in the United States.Spatial and spatio-temporal epidemiology · 2020Article
- Article
- Spatial and temporal epidemiological analysis in the Big Data era.Preventive veterinary medicine · 2015Review
- Comments on 'a critical look at prospective surveillance using a scan statistic' by T. Correa, M. Costa, and R. Assunção.Statistics in medicine · 2015Article
- Trends in animal rabies surveillance in the endemic state of Minas Gerais, Brazil.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2015Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The scan statistic is a very popular surveillance technique for purely spatial, purely temporal, and spatial-temporal disease data. It was extended to the prospective surveillance case, and it has been applied quite extensively in this situation. When the usual signal rules, as those implemented in SaTScan(TM) (Boston, MA, USA) software, are used, we show that the scan statistic method is not appropriate for the prospective case. The reason is that it does not adjust properly for the sequential and repeated tests carried out during the surveillance. We demonstrate that the nominal significance level α is not meaningful and there is no relationship between α and the recurrence interval or the average run length (ARL). In some cases, the ARL may be equal to ∞, which makes the method ineffective. This lack of control of the type-I error probability and of the ARL leads us to strongly oppose the use of the scan statistic with the usual signal rules in the prospective context.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.