Matched Samples Logistic Regression in Case-control Studies with Missing Values: When to Break the Matches

• Activity Number: 382
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Harry J. Khamis*+ and Lisbeth Hansson
• Companies: Wright State University and Uppsala University
• Keywords: conditional ; unconditional ; maximum likelihood ; method bias ; root mean square error

Abstract

Simulated data sets are used to evaluate conditional and unconditional maximum likelihood estimation in an individual case-control design with continuous covariates when there are different rates of excluded cases and different levels of other design parameters. The effectiveness of the estimation procedures are measured by method bias, variance of the estimators, root mean square error (RMSE), and a goodness-of-fit measure. Conditional estimation leads to higher RMSE than unconditional estimation in the presence of missing observations, especially for 1:1 matching. The RMSE is higher for the smaller stratum size, especially for the 1:1 matching. The fit of the model appears to be insensitive to missing data, but is generally higher for the conditional estimation than for the unconditional estimation. The fit is particularly good for the 1:2 matching design. For minimizing RMSE, a high matching ratio is recommended; in this case, conditional and unconditional logistic regression models yield comparable levels of effectiveness. For maximizing fit, the 1:2 matching design with the conditional logistic regression model is recommmended.