Back to Top Tell me about crude and age-adjusted rates in Injury Mortality Reports. The crude rate per 100,000 is figured by dividing the number of deaths in a particular population by the total number of people in that population, then multiplying that ratio by 100,000. The U.S. male population that year was 131,017,669. Now multiply by 100,000 you get 78.62. So, in 1997, for every 100,000 males in the U.S., 78.62 died from injuries.
Some injuries are more prevalent among certain age groups than among others.
For example, deaths from falls occur more often among older Americans than among any other age group. Age adjustment allows us to compare injury rates without concern that differences in those rates are caused by variations in the age distributions between populations or among the same population over time. In other words, it allows us to compare apples to apples, rather than apples to oranges. However, for reports requested by standard age groups and custom age ranges, only crude rates per 100,000 are available. In order to get this information, you will need to run multiple reports.