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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Jul 1.
Published in final edited form as: Risk Anal. 2012 Jul;32(Suppl 1):S25–S38. doi: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2011.01662.x

Table II.

Guide to Methods Used in this Study

Step # Final Result Data Source(s) Calculation
0 All-race, all-cause single year of age cohort life tables for 1900–1960 birth cohorts years by sex -- truncated in 2000 Berkeley Mortality Database Baseline
1 All-race, all-cause other than lung cancer single year of age cohort life tables for 1900–1960 birth cohorts by sex - truncated in 2000 US mortality rates for lung cancer by 5 year age-groups for each calendar year 1950–2000

  1. Converted lung cancer rates to probabilities using standard actuarial formulas.

  2. Removed lung cancer as a cause of death.
2 All-race, all-cause other than lung cancer single year of age cohort life tables for 1900–1960 birth cohorts by sex by smoking status (never, current, former) - truncated in 2000

  • ACS Cancer Prevention Studies (CPS-I, CPS-II and Nutrition- Follow-Up to CPS-II)

  • National Health Interview Surveys (1965–2000)

  1. Smoothed relative risks over age and calendar year from ACS Cancer Prevention Studies.

  2. Smoothed smoking prevalence from NHIS over birth cohort and age.

  3. Combined relative risks and smoking prevalence to compute ratios of mortality of current, former, and never smokers relative to total population (by age and birth cohort).

  4. Applied ratios to result of step #1(b) to partition total population life-table into three tables by smoking status.
3 Current smokers life table in step #2 partitioned by smoking quintiles

  • CPS-II used to compute relative risks of current to never smokers by age and cigarettes per day (CPD)

  • NHIS surveys (1965–2000) used to compute average CPD for each smoking quintile for current smokers

  1. Estimated CPD by smoking quintile from NHIS surveys by birth cohort and age.

  2. Estimated relative risks from CPS-II over age and CPD.

  3. Combined 3(a) & 3(b) to compute the relative risks for each smoking quintile by birth cohort and age.

  4. Calibrated relative risks so 0.2 times the sum across all five quintiles equals the smoothed relative risks for current smokers derived in step #2.

  5. Used calibrated relative risks of current to never smokers by smoking quintile to derive relative risks of current to total population by smoking quintile.

  6. Applied relative risks to current smoker life table from step #1 to partition it into five life tables by smoking quintile.
4 Former smoker life tables in step #2 partitioned by age quit, number of years quit, and average CPD

  • CPS-I

  1. Used CPS-I to derive excess risk equation for former smokers as a function of age quit, years since quit, and CPD.

  2. Applied excess risk equation to never smoker life table from step #2 and current smoker life table by smoking quintile from step #3 to derive more refined former smoker life tables.