Formal demography is mainly concerned with measurements. It is concerned with things like birth, death, emigration, marriage, divorce, etc. Social demography stresses the social, economic and political aspects of the population. It is a method that helps in foreseeing changes in population growth and its structure.

noun. the science of vital and social statistics, as of the births, deaths, diseases, marriages, etc., of populations.

Demographic information examples include: age, race, ethnicity, gender, marital status, income, education, and employment.

The field of demography can be divided into two general areas, basic or academic demography and applied demography.

Objectives of Demography: To achieve knowledge about the size, composition, organization and distribution of the population. To study the trend of population growth which describes the past evolution present distribution and future changes in the population of an area.

The study of demography is of immense importance to an economy. Population studies help us to know how far the growth rate of the economy is keeping pace with the growth rate of population. If population is increasing at a faster rate, the pace of development of the economy will be slow.

Demographic change can influence the underlying growth rate of the economy, structural productivity growth, living standards, savings rates, consumption, and investment; it can influence the long-run unemployment rate and equilibrium interest rate, housing market trends, and the demand for financial assets.

Demography is widely used for various purposes and can encompass small, targeted populations or mass populations. Governments use demography for political observations, scientists use demography for research purposes, and businesses use demography for the purpose of advertising.

The health and health care needs of a population cannot be measured or met without knowledge of its size and characteristics. Demography is concerned with this and with understanding population dynamics – how populations change in response to the interplay between fertility, mortality and migration.

Demographers have been crucial in the first stage, since population changes are a key component of changing health needs. Demographic analysis looks at behavioural changes in the population and how these might change a population’s structure (age) and composition (gender, race, and so on) in the medium and long term.

Demographics are defined as statistical data about the characteristics of a population, such as the age, gender and income of the people within the population. Information is also available on lifestyle, employment status, accident rate and density of population per region.

Demographics are the classifiable characteristics of a given population. Demographic characteristics most commonly used in public health statistics include: Age. Gender. Race.

The Thread Analyzer detects data-races that occur during the execution of a multi-threaded process. A data race occurs when: two or more threads in a single process access the same memory location concurrently, and. at least one of the accesses is for writing, and.

Data can be used to evaluate program impact, to determine appropriate public health interventions, to monitor progress, to determine populations to target for an intervention, to determine barriers to care, and to influence public policy.

Information that you help collect during the registration process on patient demographic data such as: age, gender, race and ethnicity; becomes a part of the patient’s medical record. By knowing more about the patients that we serve, our hospital will be better able to deliver services.

Best Practices for Collecting Demographic Data

1. Determine your purpose and goals for collecting demographic data.
2. Keep your survey as brief as possible to get a greater number of responses.
3. Ask people from a wide range of demographic groups to help you.

To provide tailored care, physicians need to know as much as they can about their patients, including demographic data. This data is crucial because factors like ethnicity, age, and medical history can determine a patient’s susceptibility to certain diseases and which treatments are most effective.

Changes in population size, age, race and ethnicity affect the health-care resources needed, the cost of care provided, and even the conditions associated with each population group.

Data collected as part of a public health surveillance system can be used to estimate the magnitude of a problem, identify groups at higher risk of having poorer outcomes, examine relationships between risk factors and outcomes, develop interventions and with continued monitoring assess the effectiveness of the …

Public health surveillance contributes data and information to assess and characterize the burden and distribution of adverse health events, prioritize public health actions, monitor the impact of control measures, and identify emerging health conditions that may have a significant impact upon population health.

A limited number of methods are used to collect the majority of health-related data, including environmental monitoring, surveys, notifications, and registries. These methods can be further characterized by the approach used to obtain information from the sources described previously.

Steps in carrying out surveillance

• Reporting. Someone has to record the data.
• Data accumulation. Someone has to be responsible for collecting the data from all the reporters and putting it all together.
• Data analysis.
• Judgment and action.

Here are the top six data collection methods:

• Interviews.
• Questionnaires and surveys.
• Observations.
• Documents and records.
• Focus groups.
• Oral histories.

Public health surveillance provides and interprets data to facilitate the prevention and control of disease. To achieve this purpose, surveillance for a disease or other health problem should have clear objectives.

There are two primary types of disease surveillance: passive and active.

Public health surveillance is “the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health-related data essential to planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice.” — Field Epidemiology.

Health surveillance is a system of ongoing health checks. These health checks may be required by law for employees who are exposed to noise or vibration, ionising radiation, solvents, fumes, dusts, biological agents and other substances hazardous to health, or work in compressed air.