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Prevalence

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research

  • 283 Accesses

Synonyms

Point prevalence; Prevalence proportion; Prevalence rate

Definition

Prevalence is defined as the number of observation units in a population presenting specific conditions or characteristics at a particular point in time divided by the total number of observation units in the population at that time.

Description

The concept of prevalence is generally used in descriptive epidemiology and represents one of the two main measures of disease or morbidity (Gordis 2000, pp. 32–35). The other frequently used measure of morbidity is called incidence. Although these two concepts were developed within the field of epidemiology, they can be used in other contexts to denote the occurrence of a particular health-unrelated characteristic in the target population relevant to quality of life research. For example, we may be interested in measuring the prevalence of people with tertiary education in a community or the prevalence of households with motorized transport.

Prevalence reflects the...

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References

  • Brown, W., Bauman, A., Chey, T., Trost, S., & Mummery, K. (2004). Comparison of surveys used to measure physical activity. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 28(2), 128–134.

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  • Gordis, L. (2000). Epidemiology. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders.

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  • Peters, T. M., Shu, X. O., Moore, S. C., Xiang, Y. B., Yang, G., Ekelund, U., et al. (2010). Validity of a physical activity questionnaire in Shanghai. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 42(12), 2222–2230.

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  • Rothman, K. J. (2002). Epidemiology: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Human Performance, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

    Lok-chun Janet Lee & Ester Cerin

Authors
  1. Lok-chun Janet Lee
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  2. Ester Cerin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lok-chun Janet Lee .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche, Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Roma, Italy

    Filomena Maggino

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

    Mara Tognetti

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Lee, Lc.J., Cerin, E. (2023). Prevalence. In: Maggino, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17299-1_2257

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