{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.01805728518057285, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0018679950186799503, 'mean_word_length': 5.204633204633205, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Age estimation in clinical and public health research.


 This paper explores problems associated with age reporting in Africa and suggests ways of ascertaining age for purposes of epidemiological studies. 2 causes of poor age reporting are that of ignorance (widespread in rural communities) and that of deliberate falsification, more prevalent in urban communities. The terms age heaping, age preference, and digital preference (preference for certain final digits in age reporting) refer to tendencies of respondants to report certain ages at the expense of others, and occurs more commonly among men than women. Age data may be obtained by asking directly; if only the year of birth is provided, this should be considered inaccurate, and some method of age estimating should be utilized. Such methods include the Calendar of Historical Events method, which relates the birth of an individual to some notable event, and the Family Relationships Estimation method, which pieces together age estimates for all members of a family or household. This method requires some knowledge of marriage patterns in African society such as average age at marriage and birth intervals. The remaining methods are the Individual Maturation Estimation method (using events such as puberty, marriage, circumcision and 1st birth as milestone events) and the Community Comparative Estimation methods, which compares data from an individual with that of another in the community. Examples of all 4 estimation methods are given in interview format. A historical calendar of events for the Kirinyaga district is also provided.
