Open AccessA New Procedure to Assess When Estimates from the Cumulative Link Model Can Be Interpreted as Differences for Ordinal Scales in Quality of Life Studies
Author(s) -
Yilin Ning,
Peh Joo Ho,
Nathalie C. Støer,
Ka Keat Lim,
Hwee Lin Wee,
Mikael Hartman,
Marie Reilly,
Chuen Seng Tan
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
clinical epidemiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.868
H-Index - 58
ISSN - 1179-1349
DOI - 10.2147/clep.s288801
Subject(s) - proxy (statistics) , covariate , statistics , ordinal scale , econometrics , ordinal data , ordinal regression , linear regression , mathematics , computer science
Assessing the clinical importance of an exposure effect on a quality of life (QoL) score often requires quantifying the effect in terms of a difference in scores. Using the linear regression model (LRM) for this purpose assumes the ordinal score is a proxy for an underlying continuous variable, but the analysis offers no assessment for the validity of the assumption. We propose an approach that assesses the proxy assumption and estimates the exposure effect by using the cumulative link model (CLM).