IJERPH, Vol. 16, Pages 1076: Continuous Rural-Urban Coding for Cancer Disparity Studies: Is It Appropriate for Statistical Analysis?

Conclusions: Methodologically, it is valid to treat rural-urban codes directly as continuous variables in cancer studies, in addition to converting them into categories. This proposed continuous-variable method offers researchers more flexibility in their choice of analytic methods and preserves the information in the ordering. It can better inform how cancer risk varies, degree by degree, over a finer spectrum of rural-urban landscape.
Source: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Article Source Type: research