Standardised Rate Calculater

Purpose

This product is an Excel spreadsheet developed in MS Excel 2000. Its purpose is to calculate directly age standardised rates per 100,000 population with 95% upper and lower confidence intervals.

Methodology

Byars method is used because it performs better than other methods when there are low numbers involved. Byars method produces asymmetric limits, which differ only very slightly from the exact limits from the Chi-squared and F distributions.

Rates are calculated using 5 year age bands from 0 to 4 up to 80-84, the rest falling into 85 and over. Although the European Standard Population is used other reference populations can be entered if required.

Instructions

Download the calculator (Excel file) and follow the instructions highlighted in green on the spreadsheet.