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Wiley InterScience | ||
  Risk AnalysisVolume 18 Issue 3, Pages 293 - 297 Published Online: 29 May 2006 ©2009 Society for Risk Analysis Published on behalf of the Society for Risk Analysis
Abstract | References | Full Text: PDF (Size: 407K) | Related Articles | Citation Tracking  On Summarizing Group Exposures in Risk Assessment: Is an Arithmetic Mean or a Geometric Mean More Appropriate? Copyright 1998 Society for Risk Analysis KEYWORDS Arithmetic mean • geometric mean • grouped data • epidemiological data ABSTRACTSince substantial bias can result from assigning some type of mean exposure to a group, risk assessments based on epidemiological data should avoid the grouping of data whenever possible. However, ungrouped data are frequently unavailable, and the question arises as to whether an arithmetic or geometric mean is the most appropriate summary measure of exposure. It is argued in this paper that one should use the type of mean for which the total risk that would result if every member of the population was exposed to the mean level is as close as possible to the actual total population risk. Using this criterion an arithmetic mean is always preferred over a geometric mean whenever the dose response is convex. In each of several data sets examined in this paper for which the dose response was not convex, an arithmetic mean was still preferred based on this criterion. Received March 11, 1997; revised August 27, 1997 |  |
