Estimating the number of people with Down ’s syndrome in Scotland and the cohort at elevated risk of early onset dementia

Tizard Learning Disability Review,Volume 22, Issue 3, July 2017. Purpose To estimate the size of the population of people with Down ’s Syndrome in Scotland in order to provide a basis for estimating likely numbers of people with dementia in Down’s Syndrome at a range of ages. Design/methodology/approach Record data was requested from all General Practitioner services in Scotland on people with an identified READ code denot ing Down’s Syndrome. A statistical weighting model was then applied to account for non-response bias. Findings There were 3,261 people with Down’s Syndrome estimated by the application of a statistical weighting model. Of these, 1,118 people (34%) were aged between 40-59. This age banding inc ludes the age groups reported as having the highest incidence of early onset dementia in Down’s Syndrome. Research limitations/implications It is not possible to apply a benchmark to the percentage of observed data which gives an indication of how accurate the estimates produced are. Rather, t he quality of the estimates depends on the response rate itself and the extent to which response is correlated with the outcome variable. In short, the quality of the final weighted estimates depends on the extent to which the biasing effect is mitigated by the weighting. As a result, a different re sponse rate to this survey would have resulted in variations in the weighting model and therefore provided a different set of estimates. Originality/value This is the ...
Source: Tizard Learning Disability Review - Category: Disability Source Type: research