How Pennsylvania's sub-state numbers were produced

Everything on the Pennsylvania State Explorer comes from the state-published sources below, loaded as published. The dashboard computes nothing from them; it carries each publisher's own confidence intervals and suppression.

EDDIE: Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, Adverse Childhood Experiences

Pennsylvania Department of Health, Health Informatics Office. Pennsylvania BRFSS. Direct estimate. Retrieved 2026-10-23 (tool export; sha256 3fecd6645413…). Publisher's page

Assembled from EDDIE's own CSV exports: the tool answers one module question per query and one geography when several demographic groups are requested, so the raw file is 99 exports (11 questions x 9 geographies) concatenated with the question as a column. Requested groups: all adults, sex, age, education, income and race/ethnicity (20 of EDDIE's 45).

Survey years and pooling	Single survey years, never pooled. EDDIE offers 2016, 2019 and 2021 for every question and 2014 as well for seven of the eleven; each question is loaded for the years EDDIE offers it.
Weighting and estimation	Direct estimates from Pennsylvania's BRFSS sample, weighted with CDC's raking methodology (2011 to present) to the state's adult population; district figures use the respondents living in that district with the same weights.
Suppression rule	EDDIE's rule, quoted: "ND = Not displayed if sample is considered statistically unreliable." Its CSV export prints ND for some of those cells and omits others, so an ND row and every cell of the requested grid that the export lacks are both loaded as suppressed with that reason.
Reliability	A 95% confidence interval (lower and upper bound, whole percents) accompanies every published cell; no sample sizes are published. EDDIE also flags a district value that is significantly higher or lower than the state's, which is kept in the cell's published label.
Population	Pennsylvania adults 18 and older reached by the landline and cell telephone survey. Allegheny and Philadelphia counties are reported on their own and are excluded from the Southwest and Southeast districts.
Measures and buckets	Each of the 11 module questions is reported separately; there are no score groups. Six questions are exactly a dashboard category. The three sexual-abuse and two household substance questions are loaded as single items because the dashboard pools each set into one category. Pennsylvania's age cuts (18-29, 30-44, 45-64, 65+), its lowest education level and most of its income bands differ from the dashboard's and are kept as publisher buckets.
Comparability	Direct estimates on the same questions as the dashboard's CDC-derived Pennsylvania values for 2019; 2014, 2016 and 2021 are years CDC's public files do not carry for Pennsylvania. The Department advises that 2011 begins a trend break, which does not affect these years.
Citation	Health Informatics Office, Pennsylvania Department of Health. Enterprise Data Dissemination Informatics Exchange (EDDIE), Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, Adverse Childhood Experiences, BRFSS District tables. "These data were provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Health. The Department specifically disclaims responsibility for any analyses, interpretations, or conclusions."

Measures loaded

Measure	Explore counterpart	Periods	Cells	Withheld
Emotional/Verbal Abuse	Emotional/Verbal Abuse	2014, 2016, 2019, 2021	720	167
Physical Abuse	Physical Abuse	2014, 2016, 2019, 2021	720	169
Witnessed Intimate Partner Violence	Witnessed Intimate Partner Violence	2014, 2016, 2019, 2021	720	173
Household Mental Illness	Household Mental Illness	2014, 2016, 2019, 2021	720	165
Household Member Incarcerated	Household Member Incarcerated	2014, 2016, 2019, 2021	720	173
Parental Separation/Divorce	Parental Separation/Divorce	2014, 2016, 2019, 2021	720	168
Someone 5+ years older touched them sexually	One question of a dashboard category that pools several (sexual abuse pools three questions, household substance abuse two), so the category prevalence is at least this and is not the same measure.	2016, 2019, 2021	540	133
Someone 5+ years older made them touch them sexually	One question of a dashboard category that pools several (sexual abuse pools three questions, household substance abuse two), so the category prevalence is at least this and is not the same measure.	2016, 2019, 2021	540	134
Forced to have sex with someone 5+ years older	One question of a dashboard category that pools several (sexual abuse pools three questions, household substance abuse two), so the category prevalence is at least this and is not the same measure.	2016, 2019, 2021	540	136
Lived with a problem drinker or alcoholic	One question of a dashboard category that pools several (sexual abuse pools three questions, household substance abuse two), so the category prevalence is at least this and is not the same measure.	2014, 2016, 2019, 2021	720	160
Lived with someone who used street drugs or abused prescriptions

Reporting areas

Area	Kind	Counties (FIPS)
Pennsylvania	Statewide
Northwest	Health district	42023, 42031, 42033, 42039, 42047, 42049, 42053, 42065, 42073, 42083, 42085, 42121, 42123
Southwest (excluding Allegheny County)	Health district	42005, 42007, 42019, 42021, 42051, 42059, 42063, 42111, 42125, 42129
North Central	Health district	42015, 42027, 42035, 42037, 42081, 42093, 42097, 42105, 42109, 42113, 42117, 42119
South Central	Health district	42001, 42009, 42013, 42041, 42043, 42055, 42057, 42061, 42067, 42075, 42087, 42099, 42133
Northeast	Health district	42025, 42069, 42077, 42079, 42089, 42095, 42103, 42115, 42127, 42131
Southeast (excluding Philadelphia County)	Health district	42011, 42017, 42029, 42045, 42071, 42091, 42107
Allegheny County	Health district	42003
Philadelphia County	Health district	42101