County Attributes

SEER routinely constructs and releases county attributes that have been estimated using data from various official sources.
Two types of county attributes are released:

Static attributes are based on data collected at one point in time and are linked to cancer cases/deaths by their counties of residence regardless of the diagnosis/death year. Time-dependent attributes, on the other hand, are based on data collected at different time points and are linked to cancer cases/deaths by matching the data year with the diagnosis/death year.

County Attributes data can be analyzed with the SEER*Stat software. The most common uses of these data would be

  • to create a list of the county attribute data (e.g., median income values by county) using the case listing session; and
  • to calculate incidence and mortality rates by county attributes using rate sessions.

Percentages in SEER*Stat are displayed with two implied decimal places (e.g., 00304 represents 3.04%). Income is displayed as dollars in tens (e.g., 4523 represents $45,230). Median home value is displayed as dollars in thousands (e.g., 175 represents $175,000). See the SEER*Stat County Attributes Tutorials for examples using the data.

Census Tract Attributes

The time-dependent census tract attributes include a socioeconomic status (SES) index, the seven tract-level SES attributes that were used to construct the index, and additional attributes.