A Small Sample Correction for Estimating Attributable Risk in Case-Control Studies
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Abstract:
The attributable risk, often called the population attributable risk, is in many epidemiological contexts a more relevant measure of exposure-disease association than the excess risk, relative risk, or odds ratio. When estimating attributable risk with case-control data and a rare disease, we present a simple correction to the standard approach making it essentially unbiased, and also less noisy. As with analogous corrections given in Jewell (1986) for other measures of association, the adjustment often won't make a substantial difference unless the sample size is very small or point estimates are desired within fine strata, but we discuss the possible utility for applications.
Subject Area:
Categorical Data Analysis, Epidemiology, General Biostatistics, Statistical Theory and Methods
Suggested Citation:
Daniel B. Rubin, "A Small Sample Correction for Estimating Attributable Risk in Case-Control Studies" (December 2008). U.C. Berkeley Division of Biostatistics Working Paper Series. Working Paper 243.
http://www.bepress.com/ucbbiostat/paper243