multibias

R-CMD-check cranlogs

Overview

The multibias package is used to adjust for multiple biases in causal inference when working with observational data. Bias here refers to the case when the associational estimate of effect (e.g., \(`P(Y=1|X=1,C=0) / P(Y=1|X=0,C=0)`\)) does not equal the causal estimate of effect (e.g., \(`P(Y^{X=1}=1) / P(Y^{X=0}=1)`\)). The underlying methods are explained in the article:

Brendel PB, Torres AZ, Arah OA, Simultaneous adjustment of uncontrolled confounding, selection bias and misclassification in multiple-bias modelling, International Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 52, Issue 4, Pages 1220–1230

The functions provide odds ratio estimates adjusted for any combination of: uncontrolled confounding (uc), exposure misclassification (em), outcome misclassification (om), and selection bias (sel).

Single bias adjustments:

Function Adjusts for
adjust_em() exposure misclassification
adjust_om() outcome misclassification
adjust_sel() selection bias
adjust_uc() uncontrolled confounding

Multiple bias adjustments:

Function Adjusts for
adjust_em_sel() exposure misclassification & selection bias
adjust_em_om exposure misclassification & outcome misclassification
adjust_om_sel() outcome misclassification & selection bias
adjust_uc_em() uncontrolled confounding & exposure misclassificaiton
adjust_uc_om() uncontrolled confounding & outcome misclassification
adjust_uc_sel() uncontrolled confounding & selection bias
adjust_uc_em_sel() uncontrolled confounding, exposure misclassification, & selection bias
adjust_uc_om_sel() uncontrolled confounding, outcome misclassification, & selection bias

The package also includes several dataframes that are useful for demonstrating and validating the bias adjustment methods. Each dataframe contains different combinations of bias as identified by the same prefixing system (e.g., uc for uncontrolled confounding). For each bias combination, there is a dataframe with incomplete information (as would be encountered in the real world) (e.g., df_uc) and a dataframe with complete information that was used to derive the biased data (e.g., df_uc_source).

If you are new to bias analysis, check out Applying Quantitative Bias Analysis to Epidemiologic Data or visit my website. For examples, see the vignette.

Installation

```{r, eval = FALSE} # install from CRAN install.packages(“multibias”)

install from github using devtools

library(“devtools”)

devtools::install_github(“pcbrendel/multibias”) ```

How it works

  1. Determine the desired biases to adjust for in your observational data for a given exposure-outcome effect and identify the corresponding adjust function.
  2. Obtain the necessary bias parameters (see function documentation) for bias adjustment. These values could come from the literature, validation data, or expert opinion. Each parameter can be represented as a single value or as a probability distribution.
  3. Run the adjust function after inputting:
    1. The observational data
    2. Column names of the exposure, outcome, and measured confounders
    3. The bias parameters
    4. Level for outupt confidence interval
  4. The adjust function will output the bias-adjusted exposure-outcome odds ratio and confidence interval.