Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 25, 2025

Characterization of Complex Systems Using the Design of Experiments Approach: Transient Protein Expression in Tobacco as a Case Study
Published on: January 31, 2014
The change in estimate method for selecting confounders: A simulation study
Denis Talbot1,2, Awa Diop1,2,3, Mathilde Lavigne-Robichaud1,2
1Département de médecine sociale et préventive, Université Laval, Québec, Canada.
Background:
The change in estimate is a popular approach for selecting confounders in epidemiology. It is recommended in epidemiologic textbooks and articles over significance test of coefficients, but concerns have been raised concerning its validity. Few simulation studies have been conducted to investigate its performance.
Methods:
An extensive simulation study was realized to compare different implementations of the change in estimate method. The implementations were also compared when estimating the association of body mass index with diastolic blood pressure in the PROspective Québec Study on Work and Health.
Results:
All methods were susceptible to introduce important bias and to produce confidence intervals that included the true effect much less often than expected in at least some scenarios. Overall mixed results were obtained regarding the accuracy of estimators, as measured by the mean squared error. No implementation adequately differentiated confounders from non-confounders. In the real data analysis, none of the implementation decreased the estimated standard error.
Conclusion:
Based on these results, it is questionable whether change in estimate methods are beneficial in general, considering their low ability to improve the precision of estimates without introducing bias and inability to yield valid confidence intervals or to identify true confounders.
More Related Videos
06:55Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting Propensity Score using the Military Health System Data Repository and National Death Index
Published on: January 8, 2020
10:50Using the FishSim Animation Toolchain to Investigate Fish Behavior: A Case Study on Mate-Choice Copying In Sailfin Mollies
Published on: November 8, 2018
Related Concept Videos
Strategies for Assessing and Addressing Confounding
Confounding can be addressed at both the design phase of a study and through analytical methods after data...
Confounding in Epidemiological Studies
Randomized Experiments
Simple randomization
Simple...
Types of Biopharmaceutical Studies: Controlled and Non-Controlled Approaches
Non-controlled studies, commonly employed for initial exploration, lack a control group, rendering them susceptible to biases and external influences. In contrast,...
What are Estimates?
The estimate for the mean of a sample is denoted by ͞x, whereas the mean of the population is designated as μ. Further, parameters such...
One-Compartment Open Model: Wagner-Nelson and Loo Riegelman Method for ka Estimation
On...