Determining the size of a cross‐sectional sample to estimate the age‐specific incidence of an irreversible disease

The design of a cross‐sectional survey to estimate the age‐specific incidence of an irreversible disease is considered, where the incidence rate is not changing over time and the risk of mortality is not affected by the onset of disease. The sample is assumed to give information on the current age and disease status of individuals, but not on age at onset of the disease. We consider the problem of determining overall sample size in this context, as well as how best to choose the distribution of sampling across various age groups. These issues are considered with the aim of obtaining incidence estimates achieving acceptable levels of precision. The proposed methods are illustrated by measles incidence estimation.