Assessing the suitability of fractional polynomial methods in health services research: A perspective on the categorization epidemic

Journal of Health Services Research and Policy

Volumn 16, Issue 3, 2011, Pages 147-152

  Williams, Jennifer Stewart ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADULT; AGED; ARTICLE; CLASSIFICATION ALGORITHM; CODING AND CLASSIFICATION; EPIDEMIOLOGY; FRACTIONAL POLYNOMIAL METHOD; HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH; HEART REHABILITATION; HUMAN; MATHEMATICAL VARIABLE; NONLINEAR REGRESSION ANALYSIS; OUTCOME ASSESSMENT; PRIORITY JOURNAL; STATISTICAL ANALYSIS;

AGE FACTORS; AGED; AGED, 80 AND OVER; CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASES; DATA INTERPRETATION, STATISTICAL; HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH; HUMANS; MIDDLE AGED; MODELS, STATISTICAL; RESEARCH DESIGN;

EID: 79959942935     PISSN: 13558196     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1258/jhsrp.2010.010063     Document Type: Article

References (25)

1. Royston P, Altman DG, Sauerbrei W. Dichotomising continuous predictors in multiple regression: a bad idea. Statistics in Medicine 2006;25:127-41 (Pubitemid 43136953)
2. Altman DG, Lausen B, Sauerbrei W, Schumacher M. Dangers of using "optimal" cutpoints in the evaluation of prognostic factors. Commentary. J National Cancer Institute 1994;86:829-35
3. Greenland S. Avoiding power loss associated with categorization and ordinal scores in dose-response and trend analysis. Epidemiology 1995;6:450-4
4. Brenner H, Blettner M. Controlling for continuous confounders in epidemiological research. Epidemiology 1997;8:429-34 (Pubitemid 27274231)
5. Royston P, Ambler G, Sauerbrei W. The use of fractional polynomials to model continuous risk variables in epidemiology. Int J Epidemiology 1999;28:964-74 (Pubitemid 29525041)
6. Royston P, Sauerbrei W. Building multivariable regression models with continuous covariates in clinical epidemiology with an emphasis on fractional polynomials. Methods Inf Med 2005;44:561-71 (Pubitemid 41345381)
7. Scott DW. On optimal and data-based histograms. Biometrika 1979;66:3
8. Wand MP. Data-based choice of histogram bin width. American Statistician 1997;51:59-64
9. Wainer H. Picturing the uncertain world. How to understand, communicate, and control uncertainty through graphical display. Princeton: Princeton University Press 2009
10. Greenland S. Dose-response and trend analysis in Epidemiology: alternatives to categorical analysis. Epidemiology 1995;6:356-65
11. Royston P, Altman DG. Regression using fractional polynomials of continuous covariates: parsimonious parametric modelling. Applied Statistics 1994;43:429-67
12. MacCallum RC, Zhang S, Preacher KJ, Rucker DD. On the practice of dichotomization of quantitative variables. Psychological Methods 2002;7:19-40
13. Oddy WH, Sherriff JL, de Klerk NH, Kendall GE, Sly PD, Beilin LJ, et al. The relation of breastfeeding and Body Mass Index to asthma and atopy in children: A prospective cohort study to age 6 Years. American J Public Health 2004;94:1531-7 (Pubitemid 39121590)
14. Hyndman JCG, Holman CDJ, P DV. Effect of distance and social disadvantage on the response to invitations to attend mammography screening. J Med Screen 2000;7:141-5
15. Brameld KJ, Holman CD, Lawrence DM, Hobbs MST. Improved methods for estimating incidence from linked hospital morbidity data. Int J Epidemiology 2003;32:617-24 (Pubitemid 37039018)
16. Holman CD, Wisniewski JB, Semmens JB, Rouse IL, Bass AJ. Mortality and prostate cancer risk in 19 598 men after surgery for benign prostatic hyperplasia. BJU International 1999;84:37-42 (Pubitemid 29346772)
17. Stewart Williams JA. Using non linear decomposition to explain the discriminatory effects of male-female differentials in access to care. A cardiac rehabilitation case study. Soc Sci Med 2009;69:1072-9
18. Stewart Williams JA. Evidence and Equity in Healthcare. Newcastle: School of Medicine and Public Health, Faculty of Health, University of Newcastle, 2009
19. Stewart Williams JA, Byles JE, Inder K. Equity of access to cardiac rehabilitation: the role of system factors. Inter J Equity in Health 2010;9:7
20. Royston P, Ambler G. Multivariable fractional polynomials: update. Stata Technical Bulletin 1999;49:17-23
21. Sauerbrei W, Meier-Hirmer C, Benner A, Royston P. Multivariable regression model building by using fractional polynomials: description of SAS, STATA and R programs. Computational Statistics & Data Analysis 2006;50:3464-85 (Pubitemid 43794958)
22. Robertson C, Boyle P, Hsieh C, Macfarlane GJ, Maisonneuve P. Some statistical considerations in the analysis of case-control studies when exposure variables are continuous measurements. Epidemiology 1994;5:164-70 (Pubitemid 24073390)
23. Weinberg CR. How bad is categorisation? (Editorial). Epidemiology 1995;6:345-7
24. Rothman KJ, Greenland S. Modern epidemiology. Second edition ed. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 1998
25. Ahrens W, Pigeot I, eds. Handbook of epidemiology. Bremen: Springer, 2005