Wednesday 14th October 2009, 2.00pm - 5.00pm at Manchester Dental Education Centre (MANDEC), Higher
Cambridge Street, Manchester, M15 6FH (tea will be served about mid-afternoon)
(building 41, entrance on corner
facing building 35)
Joint meeting with Manchester University's Biostats
Group
Theme: Measurement Error
Stijn Vansteelandt (The University of Ghent)
Correcting for measurement error in compliance-adjusted analyses of randomized clinical trials
While most scientists appreciate the value of a simple and robust intent-to-treat (ITT) analysis in clinical
trials, many challenge the wisdom of relying solely on the ITT summary for major decisions facing a complex drug
delivery system. In practice, drug exposure varies over time, as compliance with prescribed dosing regimens tends
to vary widely within and between subjects. This affects the relevance of a measured ITT effect for future patient
horizons. Research efforts have therefore focused on estimation of the causal effect of observed exposure patterns.
In doing so, they silently assume that compliance was accurately measured. Unfortunately, there typically remains a
margin of error in exposure measurement, even with today's highly sophisticated electronic monitors of drug
intake.
In this talk, I will discuss the impact of error-prone compliance measures on compliance-adjusted analyses of
randomized clinical trials. I will propose a class of estimators of the causal effect of received treatment on
response under linear structural mean models which acknowledge that exposure is incorrectly measured with known
error mean and variance. In addition, I will present a new approach which allows correction for measurement error
with unknown mean and variance in the presence of an instrumental variable, which is known to be uncorrelated with
the error and not to modify the causal effect of interest. The methodology will be illustrated via simulations and
a data application.
Stijn's slides
Terence Iles and Jonathan Gillard, The University of Cardiff
The effect that measurement error has in disguising a straight line relationship between two variables
The presence of measurement error often obscures a linear relationship between two measurements - most
undergraduate statisticians are familiar with simple least squares regression as a way of fitting straight lines to
scattered data. In this talk we will concentrate on the effects of the presence of measurement error in both
variables. Some slightly surprising results will be demonstrated; it turns out that the effect of measurement error
on the appearance of the scatter plot depends on the distribution of the measured variables. The talk will include
a discussion of the relevance of conditional expectation, and will describe approaches to the problems of
prediction and the definition of appropriate residuals that might be used for diagnostic checking or the
construction of reference intervals.
Terry and Jonathan's slides
Eva Batistatou, The University of Manchester
Grouping vs. non-grouping methods to correct for bias due to measurement error in 1-stage and 2-stage
studies
Exposure measurement error can lead to substantial bias in assessing exposure effects which can be corrected if
repeated exposure measurements (Ws), are available. A single-stage (1S) study design, in which response Y and
repeated Ws are measured for all subjects, could be used to adjust for measurement error. For expensive exposure
measures though, it is common to carry out repeated exposure measurements only for a sample of subjects, leading to
a two-stage (2S) study which produces data ‘missing by design’.
Several bias-correction methods of analysis have been proposed (i.e. regression calibration, SIMEX) in the
medical literature, some of which can address missing data (eg using imputation methods). Here we will compare
these methods in terms of bias and Root Mean Square Error - both for 1S and 2S designs - with recently proposed
grouping bias-correction methods, in which means of exposure - across subjects grouped accordingly to similar
exposure characteristics - are used as an instrumental variable in the analysis.
Eva's slides
If you would like to attend this free seminar please contact Wendy Lamb (+44 (0)161 275 5764):
|