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Assessment of risks by predicting counterfactuals
Author(s) -
Zou G. Y.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
statistics in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.996
H-Index - 183
eISSN - 1097-0258
pISSN - 0277-6715
DOI - 10.1002/sim.3751
Subject(s) - counterfactual conditional , econometrics , computer science , statistics , mathematics , psychology , counterfactual thinking , social psychology
Abstract Risk assessment is fundamental to most epidemiological and biomedical investigations. In this article, risks are assessed in terms of risk difference and risk ratio by predicting counterfactual outcomes. Models considered for binary outcomes are probit, logistic, and extreme‐value regressions. New confidence intervals for the effect measures are proposed using the method of variance estimates recovery, and evaluated by a simulation study. A SAS macro is provided for the calculations. A risk ratio obtained using counterfactuals is also compared in the simulation with that directly estimated from the modified Poisson model to answer a recent concern about the validity of the latter approach. Two examples are used to illustrate the methods. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.