Statistical Significance
Significant variance is always compared on a national level first, comparisons on the State level are only used where the national level cannot be calculated, or if specifically requested by the client entity.
There are many tests to determine significance, but which calculations can be performed are dependent on the data available through the data sources. Currently, we rely on the following methods to test for significance:
Values are then assigned a significance score based on their performance in the appropriate significance test, which is used to populate the sig_var_state or sig_var_nation field in pellucid2. Values for these fields are limited to:
- Null: Not enough information or not a large enough sample size to calculate
- 1: High Performer or Statistically Better
- 0: Average Performer or no statistical difference
- -1: Poor Performer or Statistically Worse