Quantifying age heaping and age misreporting in a multicentric survey

Abstract

Introduction: Demographic indices known as the age-heaping indexes were used to explore the patterns of age misreporting in a multicentric survey. Methods: The data of 3252 individuals were analyzed, and measurement of errors in age for the sampled data has been evaluated by Whipple's Index (WI), Myer's Blended Index, and United Nations Age–Sex Accuracy Score which comprises Sex Ratio Score, Male Age Ratio Score (ARS), and Female ARS. Results: Out of total 3252 participants, 828 (25.5%) were female. The mean statistical division age of our population was 34 (8.5) years and ranged from 15 to 65 years. The percentage of female ages ending with digits 0 or 5 is 23.55% and percentage of male ages ending with digits 0 or 5 is 23.28%. The calculated WI was 117.75 and 116.34 for males and females, respectively. The calculated Myer's Index for females and males is 10.53 and 25, respectively. Conclusion: The study provides evidence that probably age-heaping bias is less of problem in the conducted study.

Keywords

• age-heaping bias
• myer's blended index
• whipple's index