Sample selection is a pernicious source of potential bias known to equally plague randomized and observational studies in the health sciences. Selection bias is said to be present in a study, if in the observed sample, features of the underlying population of primary scientific interest, are entangled with features of the selection process not of scientific interest, so that naive inferences may be inaccurate and possibly misleading. The proposal aims to study two leading causes of selection bias, (i) outcome missing not at random in regression analysis, and (ii) unobserved outcome due to truncation by death. The main goal is to clarify the main distinguishing features of (i) and (ii), and to develop novel methodology to tame selection bias for each of these settings. The methods for (i) will be used to make inferences about HIV sero-prevalence in Botswana based on a nationally representative household survey subject to substantial (>40%) HIV testing refusal by household members. The methods for (ii) will be used to obtain inferences about the effects of maternal HIV status on outcomes typically only observed for live births, such as low birth weight, in the presence of non-trivial rates of still birth occurrence in a study conducted in Botswana.

Public Health Relevance

Sample selection is a potential threat to the validity of randomized and observational studies in the health sciences. Selection bias can arise due to an outcome missing not at random, sometimes due to death, in which case valid inference can often not be obtained without an additional assumption. In this proposal, we propose instrumental variable type techniques to account for selection bias due to certain extreme forms of missing data encountered often in the health sciences, with an emphasis on HIV research.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
Type
Exploratory/Developmental Grants (R21)
Project #
1R21AI113251-01
Application #
8759387
Study Section
Biostatistical Methods and Research Design Study Section (BMRD)
Program Officer
Gezmu, Misrak
Project Start
2014-07-15
Project End
2016-06-30
Budget Start
2014-07-15
Budget End
2015-06-30
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
2014
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Harvard University
Department
Public Health & Prev Medicine
Type
Schools of Public Health
DUNS #
City
Boston
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02115
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Sun, BaoLuo; Tchetgen Tchetgen, Eric J (2018) On Inverse Probability Weighting for Nonmonotone Missing at Random Data. J Am Stat Assoc 113:369-379
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Tchetgen Tchetgen, Eric J; Phiri, Kelesitse (2017) Evaluation of Medication-mediated Effects in Pharmacoepidemiology. Epidemiology 28:439-445
Gilsanz, Paola; Kubzansky, Laura D; Tchetgen Tchetgen, Eric J et al. (2017) Changes in Depressive Symptoms and Subsequent Risk of Stroke in the Cardiovascular Health Study. Stroke 48:43-48
Nguyen, Thu T; Tchetgen Tchetgen, Eric J; Kawachi, Ichiro et al. (2017) The role of literacy in the association between educational attainment and depressive symptoms. SSM Popul Health 3:586-593
Sofer, Tamar; Cornelis, Marilyn C; Kraft, Peter et al. (2017) CONTROL FUNCTION ASSISTED IPW ESTIMATION WITH A SECONDARY OUTCOME IN CASE-CONTROL STUDIES. Stat Sin 27:785-804
Nguyen, Thu T; Tchetgen Tchetgen, Eric J; Kawachi, Ichiro et al. (2016) Instrumental variable approaches to identifying the causal effect of educational attainment on dementia risk. Ann Epidemiol 26:71-6.e1-3
Prague, Melanie; Wang, Rui; Stephens, Alisa et al. (2016) Accounting for interactions and complex inter-subject dependency in estimating treatment effect in cluster-randomized trials with missing outcomes. Biometrics 72:1066-1077

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