Use of the scale-up methods in injury prevention research: An empirical assessment to the case of choking in children

Abstract

The scale-up method estimates the size of hard to count subpopulations. This method is based on the idea that the proportion of subjects in a subpopulation E known to each member of the general population T is the same as the proportion of members of E belonging to general population T. The aim of this study is to assess if this method is suitable for estimating the number of foreign body injuries and for setting up an algorithm in order to choose the most suitable subpopulations to use in estimates. The scale-up estimator is robust and precise and the selection of subpopulations of known size is improved by our algorithm.