Incidence estimation from sentinel surveillance data; a simulation study and application to data from the Belgian laboratory sentinel surveillance

Background Inverse probability weighting (IPW) methods can be used to estimate the total number of cases from the sample collected through sentinel surveillance. Central to these methods are the inverse weights which can be derived in several ways and, in this case, represent the probability that laboratory (lab) sentinel surveillance detects a lab-confirmed case.MethodsWe compare different weights in a simulation study. Weights are obtained from the proportion of participating labs over all labs. We adjust these weights for attractiveness and density of labs over population. The market share... Mehr ...