Clustering Studies for Identifying the Role of Environmental Factors in Aetiology of Human Cancers

The Effect of Data Inaccuracy on Tests of Space‐Time Interaction

“…Tests of space‐time interaction are used to examine patterns of spatio‐temporal events and determine if, generally speaking, events which are close to each other in space are also close to each other in time, and vice versa (Jacquez , Kulldorff,). These tests are primarily employed in the fields of spatial epidemiology (McNally , Tango ), ecology (Legendre and Fortin , Fortin and Gurevitch , Jacquez , Michener , Legendre and Fortin ) and criminology (Johnson , Leitner and Helbich 2011) to help link observed event patterns to certain processes which may be responsible for their development. For example, in epidemiological studies, the detection of interaction within a pattern of disease cases may indicate the presence of a contagious process or exposure to transient, localized hazards (Marshall , Jacquez ), while the presence of interaction among criminal incidents has been linked to sprees (Knox ), near repeat victimization (Townsley et al.…”

“…Often, in the applied contexts mentioned above, when interaction is detected, more work is required at a finer scale to establish the specific process responsible (Pfeiffer et al. , McNally ). Alternatively, further investigation may be abandoned if no interaction is detected and the pattern of events is perceived to be random.…”

“…For an extended discussion of applied work employing these tests the reader is referred to reviews by Tango () and McNally ().…”