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Multiple Imputation of Missing Composite Outcomes in Longitudinal Data

In longitudinal randomised trials and observational studies within a medical context, a composite outcome—which is a function of several individual patient-specific outcomes—may be felt to best represent the outcome of interest. As in other contexts, missing data on patient outcome, due to patient d...

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Autores principales: O’Keeffe, Aidan G., Farewell, Daniel M., Tom, Brian D. M., Farewell, Vernon T.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5035329/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27729945
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12561-016-9146-z
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author O’Keeffe, Aidan G.
Farewell, Daniel M.
Tom, Brian D. M.
Farewell, Vernon T.
author_facet O’Keeffe, Aidan G.
Farewell, Daniel M.
Tom, Brian D. M.
Farewell, Vernon T.
author_sort O’Keeffe, Aidan G.
collection PubMed
description In longitudinal randomised trials and observational studies within a medical context, a composite outcome—which is a function of several individual patient-specific outcomes—may be felt to best represent the outcome of interest. As in other contexts, missing data on patient outcome, due to patient drop-out or for other reasons, may pose a problem. Multiple imputation is a widely used method for handling missing data, but its use for composite outcomes has been seldom discussed. Whilst standard multiple imputation methodology can be used directly for the composite outcome, the distribution of a composite outcome may be of a complicated form and perhaps not amenable to statistical modelling. We compare direct multiple imputation of a composite outcome with separate imputation of the components of a composite outcome. We consider two imputation approaches. One approach involves modelling each component of a composite outcome using standard likelihood-based models. The other approach is to use linear increments methods. A linear increments approach can provide an appealing alternative as assumptions concerning both the missingness structure within the data and the imputation models are different from the standard likelihood-based approach. We compare both approaches using simulation studies and data from a randomised trial on early rheumatoid arthritis patients. Results suggest that both approaches are comparable and that for each, separate imputation offers some improvement on the direct imputation of a composite outcome.
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spelling pubmed-50353292016-10-09 Multiple Imputation of Missing Composite Outcomes in Longitudinal Data O’Keeffe, Aidan G. Farewell, Daniel M. Tom, Brian D. M. Farewell, Vernon T. Stat Biosci Article In longitudinal randomised trials and observational studies within a medical context, a composite outcome—which is a function of several individual patient-specific outcomes—may be felt to best represent the outcome of interest. As in other contexts, missing data on patient outcome, due to patient drop-out or for other reasons, may pose a problem. Multiple imputation is a widely used method for handling missing data, but its use for composite outcomes has been seldom discussed. Whilst standard multiple imputation methodology can be used directly for the composite outcome, the distribution of a composite outcome may be of a complicated form and perhaps not amenable to statistical modelling. We compare direct multiple imputation of a composite outcome with separate imputation of the components of a composite outcome. We consider two imputation approaches. One approach involves modelling each component of a composite outcome using standard likelihood-based models. The other approach is to use linear increments methods. A linear increments approach can provide an appealing alternative as assumptions concerning both the missingness structure within the data and the imputation models are different from the standard likelihood-based approach. We compare both approaches using simulation studies and data from a randomised trial on early rheumatoid arthritis patients. Results suggest that both approaches are comparable and that for each, separate imputation offers some improvement on the direct imputation of a composite outcome. Springer US 2016-04-05 2016 /pmc/articles/PMC5035329/ /pubmed/27729945 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12561-016-9146-z Text en © The Author(s) 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Article
O’Keeffe, Aidan G.
Farewell, Daniel M.
Tom, Brian D. M.
Farewell, Vernon T.
Multiple Imputation of Missing Composite Outcomes in Longitudinal Data
title Multiple Imputation of Missing Composite Outcomes in Longitudinal Data
title_full Multiple Imputation of Missing Composite Outcomes in Longitudinal Data
title_fullStr Multiple Imputation of Missing Composite Outcomes in Longitudinal Data
title_full_unstemmed Multiple Imputation of Missing Composite Outcomes in Longitudinal Data
title_short Multiple Imputation of Missing Composite Outcomes in Longitudinal Data
title_sort multiple imputation of missing composite outcomes in longitudinal data
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5035329/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27729945
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12561-016-9146-z
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