Colin B. Fogarty — Page 2

arXiv2015

Discrete Optimization for Interpretable Study Populations and Randomization Inference in an Observational Study of Severe Sepsis Mortality

Motivated by an observational study of the effect of hospital ward versus intensive care unit admission on severe sepsis mortality, we develop methods to address two common problems in observational studies: (1) when there is a lack of covariate overlap between the treated and control groups, how to define an interpretable study population wherein inference can be conducted without extrapolating with respect to important variables; and (2) how to use randomization inference to form confidence intervals for the average treatment effect with binary outcomes. Our solution to problem (1) incorporates existing suggestions in the literature while yielding a study population that is easily understood in terms of the covariates themselves, and can be solved using an efficient branch-and-bound algorithm. We address problem (2) by solving a linear integer program to utilize the worst case variance of the average treatment effect among values for unobserved potential outcomes that are compatible with the null hypothesis. Our analysis finds no evidence for a difference between the sixty day mortality rates if all individuals were admitted to the ICU and if all patients were admitted to the hospital ward among less severely ill patients and among patients with cryptic septic shock. We implement our methodology in R, providing scripts in the supplementary material.

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arXiv2015

Equivalence testing for functional data with an application to comparing pulmonary function devices

Equivalence testing for scalar data has been well addressed in the literature, however, the same cannot be said for functional data. The resultant complexity from maintaining the functional structure of the data, rather than using a scalar transformation to reduce dimensionality, renders the existing literature on equivalence testing inadequate for the desired inference. We propose a framework for equivalence testing for functional data within both the frequentist and Bayesian paradigms. This framework combines extensions of scalar methodologies with new methodology for functional data. Our frequentist hypothesis test extends the Two One-Sided Testing (TOST) procedure for equivalence testing to the functional regime. We conduct this TOST procedure through the use of the nonparametric bootstrap. Our Bayesian methodology employs a functional analysis of variance model, and uses a flexible class of Gaussian Processes for both modeling our data and as prior distributions. Through our analysis, we introduce a model for heteroscedastic variances within a Gaussian Process by modeling variance curves via Log-Gaussian Process priors. We stress the importance of choosing prior distributions that are commensurate with the prior state of knowledge and evidence regarding practical equivalence. We illustrate these testing methods through data from an ongoing method comparison study between two devices for pulmonary function testing. In so doing, we provide not only concrete motivation for equivalence testing for functional data, but also a blueprint for researchers who hope to conduct similar inference.

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