Term: Age Group
Last Updated: 2008-02-21
A defined age group is often part of the eligibility criteria for a research study. Selecting eligible age groups for a study depends upon the research question and the available data. For example, for certain disease categories, the event may be rare in younger age groups and a decision may be made to exclude such cases to avoid inflating the denominator.
In Kozyrskyj et al. (2005), the following age groups were selected for analyses: 0-18 years, 19-29 years, 30-44 years, 45-59 years, 60-74 years and 75+ years, as determined by age at the end of the calendar year (December). These age groups were selected to facilitate comparison with Reid et al. (2003) descriptions of high-cost users of health care.