Introduction
This section explains how to select the demographics to be analysed in the assessments run by the CARES NG software. The software gives you the capability to:
- Select one of the default populations
- Create and select a custom population
Selection of the default populations
The second step of the assessment wizard presents to the user a list of demographics to choose from. This list coincides with the list of regulatory populations determined by the guidelines of the Environmental Protection Agency. There are two different demographics lists for the two assessment types, dietary and residential.
The first table contains the list of the default populations that can be used in a dietary assessment. Each dietary population has an identification number, shown beside the population name in the wizard and in the second column of the table. The identification numbers are used by the software, behind the scenes, to link together different data types, such as subjects’ demographic information and toxicology data.
| Population Name | Population ID |
|---|---|
| Total US Population | 1 |
| Infants 0-12 Months | 2 |
| Children 1-2 | 3 |
| Children 3-5 | 4 |
| Children 6-12 | 5 |
| Youth 13-19 | 6 |
| Adults 20-49 | 7 |
| Adults 50+ | 8 |
| Female 13-49 | 9 |
The second table contains the list of the demographics that can be analysed in the residential assessments. These populations have no identification number because the residential model does not perform any exposure analysis at individual level. Hence the populations are only labels that trigger different sets of calculations and parameter values; there are no subject-level data to be matched with data from other sources.
| Population Name |
|---|
| Adults |
| Male adults |
| Female adults |
| Children (1-2) |
| Children (3-6) |
| Children (6-11) |
| Children (11-16) |
| Infants (0) |
Selection of the custom populations
The dietary model has the capability to also analyse demographics not present among the regulatory populations. Hence the user can create his own custom population in case none of the default populations satisfies his requirements.
Click on the button Add Custom Population in the section Custom Populations; the wizard will open a new window, shown in the figure below, which contains a list of filters that can be used to select the subjects to be analysed.
The first thing you are asked to is to give a name in the field Population Name. Click on the white space beside Population Name and type in the name of the population you want to create. For example, you might want to analyse the diet of the Hispanic adults living in the U.S.A. and call it Hispanic Adults. Type Hispanic Adults in the Population Name space and press Enter.
Then you can filter the subjects you want to analyse by selecting one or more values of the following variables:
- Gender
- Age
- Weight
- Height
- Ethnicity
- Health Status
- Residence
- Pregnancy status (applicable only on women)
Whenever you select a value of each filter, the wizard will automatically show the number of the selected subjects in the blue box on the top right corner of the software (see figure below):
Age, weight and height are numeric continuous variables and the wizard provides a drop-down menu with the following options to select different ranges of values on these three variables:
- Between
- Equal to
- Greater than
- Greater than or equal to
- Less than
- Less than or equal to
In order to create the population Hispanic Adults, you have to select the following values:
- Age: click on the black arrow
of the Age filter and select Greater than or equal to and then type the number 20 in the input field beside - Ethnicity: select the values Mexican American and Other Hispanic
Click on the button Add Custom Population; you will come back on the Population page of the assessment wizard. The population Hispanic Adults appears in the Custom Populations list. The program automatically assigns an identification number to the new population.
Once you have created your custom population, you will be able to modify or delete it by clicking on Edit and Delete, respectively. These two options are presented to the right of the name of the population.