Empirical Zoning Distributions for Small Area Health Data

Many health studies use aggregate data such as the means or totals for areal units or zones when individual level data are not available. An ecological analysis using these data typically produces estimates that differ from those obtained using the corresponding individual level analysis. This is due to the modifiable area unit problem (MAUP) whereby the results of the analysis depend on the scale and zoning effects. In this paper empirical zoning distributions are used to study the effect of zoning on the parameter estimates from ecological analyses. The zoning distribution is defined as the distribution of the parameter estimates obtained from a given ecological analysis which is repeated for different sets of M zones. For simulated population data, generated using the 2007-2008 Australian National Health Survey and 2006 Australian Census, we create zoning distributions for estimates from ecological regression models at ∗Email: [email protected]