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clarify relationship of nssp data on counties and HSAs #1645

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clarify relationship of nssp data on counties and HSAs #1645

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6 changes: 4 additions & 2 deletions docs/api/covidcast-signals/nssp.md
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Expand Up @@ -42,8 +42,10 @@ As of May 2024, NSSP received data from 78% of US EDs.
## Estimation

The percent visits signals are calculated as a fraction of visits at facilities reporting to NSSP, rather than all facilities in the area.
`county`, `state` and `nation` level data is reported as-is from NSSP, without modification, while `hhs`, `hrr` and `msa` are estimated by Delphi.
State and HSA-level values are calculated and published by NSSP; County level values are not published individually, but are approximations copied from the HSA the county is in (every county in an HSA will have identical values).
NSSP publishes this data based on reporting facilities aggregated to the level of Health Service Areas (`HSA`s, which are clusters of adjacent counties).
NSSP also publishes these percentages aggregated to `state` and `nation` levels.
While NSSP also publishes what appears like `county`-level data, these values are actually inherited from the parent HSA, such that all counties in an HSA have identical values.
Delphi publishes NSSP's reported values for all these geo-levels, and also calculates and publishes values for `HRR`s and `MSA`s (based on the approximated `county` values), as well as for `HHS` regions."

### Geographic weighting
As the original data is a percentage and raw case counts are not available, `hrr`,`msa`, and `hhs` values are computed from county-level data using a weighted mean. Each county is assigned a weight equal to its population in the last census (2020). Unreported counties are implicitly treated as having a weight of 0 or a value equal to the group mean.
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