Deriving relative risks from aggregate data. 1. Theory.

Sociological macro analyses of the association between risk factors and mortality can be seen as a valuable supplement to epidemiological micro studies. However, sociologists and epidemiologists typically employ different measures of association and this hampers strict comparisons of findings. This study presents a synthetic approach relying on both micro and macro data. In Part 1, the mathematical relations between the relative risk and the attributable fraction on the one hand, and the regression coefficient on the other are derived in order to make cross level comparisons possible. Part 2 provides an empirical illustration of the approach.