Washington University School of Medicine

Division of Biostatistics
Seminar Series Spring 2008

Analysis of Clustered Binary Outcomes Measured with Uncertainty

Na Li
Department of Biostatistics, University of Minnesota

Friday, February 15, 2008, 12:30–1:30 pm

GEMS classroom, 3rd Floor in Shriner's Building
Coffee, tea, and cookies will be provided


Abstract

In genetic epidemiological studies, we may be interested in clustered binary outcomes that are not directly observed. Instead we either observe one or more surrogate outcomes which tend to be error-prone, or the true outcome is a latent variable not directly observable but is obtained from a statistical model. Through simulations, we compare several methods dealing with misclassification in binary responses. In the analysis, we use a flavor of generalized estimating equation (GEE) called alternative logistic regression (ALR) because we are interested in not only estimating the mean parameters (regression coefficients) but also the correlation parameters in the form of odds ratios. We compared imputation based methods (in particular, multiple imputation (MI)), simulation and extrapolation (SIMEX), and a GEE model with a modified link function to accommodate the measurement error. We evaluated their performances on estimating both the regression coefficients and the correlation parameter. We will also present some results from a study of delayed graft function in kidney transplant patients through data available in the United States Renal Data System (USRDS). As a work in progress, we propose a modified ALR procedure to allow measurement uncertainty in the correlation model in order to correct the bias.