A RATIO ESTIMATION METHOD FOR DETERMINING THE PREVALENCE OF COCAINE USE

Citation
M. Gossop et al., A RATIO ESTIMATION METHOD FOR DETERMINING THE PREVALENCE OF COCAINE USE, British Journal of Psychiatry, 164, 1994, pp. 676-679
Citations number
10
Categorie Soggetti
Psychiatry,Psychiatry
ISSN journal
00071250
Volume
164
Year of publication
1994
Pages
676 - 679
Database
ISI
SICI code
0007-1250(1994)164:<676:AREMFD>2.0.ZU;2-R
Abstract
This paper presents an approach to estimating the prevalence of cocain e use, based upon a new ratio estimation technique. This method can be applied to random samples of overlapping populations for which no sam pling frames exist. When the ratio estimation method is applied to the two study samples (drawn from populations of people using cocaine and people using heroin) the ratio of cocaine users to heroin users (C/H) was 1.55, with a 95% confidence interval of +/-0.48. Such estimates s hould be applied with caution. However, if used with reference to nati onal estimates of about 75 000 heroin users, application of the presen t estimate suggests that there may be about 116 000 cocaine users in t he UK.