Assessing the heterogeneity of disease spread through a community

Abstract

Becker, N. G. (Dept. of Mathematical Statistics, La Trobe U., Bundoora, Victoria 3083, Australia), and J. L. Hopper. Assessing the heterogeneity of disease spread through a community. Am J Epidemiol 1983; 117: 362-74.Care needs to be exercised in attempts at obtaining a description of the spread of disease merely by fitting a mathematical model to infectious disease data and adjusting the model until it adequately fits the observed epidemic curve. It is always necessary to perform separate statistical tests of the underlying assumptions of an epidemic model before attempting to use such a model to obtain epidemiologically meaningful insights into the mechanism of disease spread. Methods for ..