The Concise Encyclopedia of Statistics

2008 Edition

Attributable Risk

Reference work entry
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-32833-1_16
How to cite

The attributable risk is the difference between the risk encountered by individuals exposed to a particular factor and the risk encountered by individuals who are not exposed to it. This is the opposite to avoidable risk. It measures the absolute effect of a cause (that is, the excess risk or cases of illness).

HISTORY

See risk.

MATHEMATICAL ASPECTS

By definition we have:
$$ \begin{aligned} \text{attributable risk} = \text{risk for those exposed}\\ - \text{risk for those not exposed}\:. \end{aligned} $$
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REFERENCES

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    MacMahon, B., Pugh, T.F.: Epidemiology: Principles and Methods. Little Brown, Boston, MA (1970)Google Scholar
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    Morabia, A.: L'Épidémiologie Clinique. Editions “Que sais-je?”. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris (1996)Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 2008