Overcoming biases and misconceptions in ecological studies

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A: Statistics in Society

Volumn 164, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 141-154

  Guthrie, Katherine A ^a   Sheppard, Lianne ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON   (United States)

Author keywords

Aggregate data analysis; Confounding; Ecological fallacy; Measurement error

Indexed keywords

EID: 0035648939     PISSN: 09641998     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-985X.00193     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. Brenner, H. (1993) Bias due to non-differential misclassification of polytomous confounders. J. Clin. Epidem., 46, 57-63.
2. Brenner, H., Greenland, S. and Savitz, D. A. (1992) The effects of nondifferential confounder misclassification in ecologic studies. Epidemiology, 3, 456-459.
3. Brenner, H., Savitz, D. A., Jöckel, K.-H. and Greenland, S. (1992) Effects of nondifferential exposure misclassification in ecologic studies. Am. J. Epidem., 135, 85-95.
4. Carroll, R. J. (1997) Surprising effects of measurement error in an aggregate data estimator. Biometrika, 84, 231-234.
5. Durkheim, E. (1951) Suicide, a Study in Sociology. New York: Free Press.
6. Greenland, S. and Morgenstern, H. (1989) Ecological bias, confounding, and effect modification. Int. J. Epidem., 18, 269-274.
7. Greenland, S. and Robins, J. (1994) Ecological studies - biases, misconceptions, and counterexamples. Am. J. Epidem., 139, 747-760.
8. Kelsey, J. L., Whittemore, A. D., Evans, A. S. and Thompson, W. D. (1996) Methods in Observational Epidemiology, 2nd edn. New York: Oxford University Press.
9. Lasserre, V., Guihenneuc-Jouyaux, C. and Richardson, S. (2000) Biases in ecological studies: utility of including within-area distribution of confounders. Statist. Med., 19, 45-59.
10. Morgenstern, H. (1995) Ecologic studies in epidemiology: concepts, principles, and methods. A. Rev. Publ. Hlth, 16, 61-81.
11. Neuhaus, J. M. and Kalbfleisch, J. D. (1998) Between- and within-cluster covariate effects in the analysis of clustered data. Biometrics, 54, 638-645.
12. Plummer, M. and Clayton, D. (1996) Estimation of population exposure in ecological studies. J. R. Statist. Soc. B, 58, 113-126.
13. Prentice, R. L. and Sheppard, L. (1995) Aggregate data studies of disease risk factors. Biometrika, 82, 113-125.
14. Richardson, S. (1996) Discussion of the papers by Plummer and Clayton, and Festing and Lovell. J. R. Statist. Soc. B, 58, 141-143.
15. Richardson, S., Guihenneuc-Jouyaux, C. and Lasserre, V. (1996) Re: ̈Ecological studies - biases, misconceptions, and counterexamples̈. Am. J. Epidem., 143, 522-523.
16. Richardson, S., Stücker, I. and Hémon, D. (1987) Comparison of relative risks in ecological and individual studies: some methodological considerations. Int. J. Epidem., 16, 111-120.
17. Schwartz, S. (1994) The fallacy of the ecological fallacy: the potential misuse of a concept and the consequences. Am. J. Publ. Hlth, 84, 819-824.
18. Sheppard, L. and Prentice, R. L. (1995) On the reliability and precision of within- and between-population estimates of relative rate parameters. Biometrics, 51, 853-863.
19. Sheppard, L., Prentice, R. L. and Rossing, M. A. (1996) Design considerations for estimation of exposure effects on disease risk, using aggregate data studies. Statist. Med., 15, 1849-1858.