3. Calculating disability adjusted life years

Abstract

This chapter introduces the formula used for calculating a DALY and its components. The calculations and formulae are not essential to assessing the effort and time involved in conducting the study, as most of the effort is expended in the data collation and processing stage before the formulae are applied. However, many of the arguments for and against the DALY approach to burden of disease that will be discussed in Chapter 6, are based on concepts used in developing these formulae. The processing description in Chapter 5 explains how the components of the formulae are obtained in the preparatory and data collation stages of conducting the study.