Can I use the county maps and estimates to make comparisons, rank counties, or evaluate trends?
Caution should be exercised in making comparisons based on the county maps and estimates. The estimates are intended as individual point estimates. Significance testing or hypothesis testing may be inappropriate. The maps are presented for displaying possible geographic patterns and stimulating further investigation, but are not intended as formal representations of similarities and differences. Bayesian 95% confidence intervals and standard deviations are provided as precision indicators of the individual county-point estimates, and should be used in data analyses. One should not assume that counties mapped in different colors have significantly different diabetes prevalence. To produce a state or national map, the county estimates are grouped in categories by various methods. This grouping does not incorporate the standard deviation or confidence interval, and does not imply any formal comparison between counties. Age-adjusted ranks based on age-adjusted percent of diabetes and ranks
