Data from: Conserved patterns of incomplete reporting in pre-vaccine era childhood diseases

Observation processes are important yet often neglected processes in historical ecological timeseries. In particular, historical case report timeseries of childhood diseases have played an important role in the formulation of mechanistic dynamical models of populations and metapopulations. Yet no comprehensive study of childhood disease reporting rates has been conducted to date. We remedy this gap with a detailed analysis of measles and whooping cough reporting rates in pre-vaccine U.S. cities and states, as well as cities in England & Wales. Overall, we find the variability between locations and diseases greatly exceeds that between methods or time periods. We demonstrate a strong relationship within location between diseases, and within disease between geographic areas. In addition, we find that demographic covariates such as ethnic composition and school attendance explain a nontrivial proportion of reporting rate variation. Overall, our findings show that disease reporting is both variable and non-random, and that disease identity, geography, and socioeconomic factors influences reporting rates in consistent ways. We suggest that variability in observation processes such as reporting rate can be accounted for, and that doing so can reveal key dynamical processes that are otherwise obscured.