Cancer Registration Statistics, England 2020

The crude rate is the number of events in a specific population during a time period per 100,000 people. An event can either be a tumour diagnosis where the measure would be an incidence rate, or a death from cancer where the measure would be a mortality rate. A crude rate is calculated using the following equation:

(total number of events)/(total population) x 100,000

In the bulletin and data tables, the non-standardised rate refers to the crude rate for all ages combined, whereas the age-specific rate refers to the crude rate for defined age bands.

Age-standardised cancer incidence and mortality rates are presented. An age-standardised rate is a weighted average of the age-specific rates, where the weights uses age-specific proportions of a standardised population European Standard Population 2013 (ESP). Standardising rates with the ESP accounts for the differing age structure of different populations. This means that geographical and time comparisons of the rates can be made.