Calculating Age-adjusted Rates

An age-adjusted rate is a weighted average of the age-specific (crude) rates, where the weights are the proportions of persons in the corresponding age groups of a standard million population. The potential confounding effect of age is reduced when comparing age-adjusted rates computed using the same standard million population. Several sets of standard population data are included in SEER*Stat. These include the total US populations (1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000), the 1991 Canadian population, the European population, and the world population. The age-adjusted rate for an age group comprised of the ages x through y is calculated using the following formula:

View the steps to calculate an age-adjusted rate.