ArticleBMC medical research methodology2012
Evaluation of the propensity score methods for estimating marginal odds ratios in case of small sample size.
Article in BMC medical research methodology, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 98 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
98 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Performance of propensity score methods in observational studies: a systematic review.Systematic reviews · 2026Pooled it
- Radiotherapy boost in patients with hypoxic lesions identified byEuropean journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging · 2019Trial
- Evaluating large-scale propensity score adjustment when sample size is small.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2026Article
- Caveats on Using Firth's Penalization in the Model-Based Regression Standardization for Rare Diseases.Statistics in medicine · 2026Article
- Real-world performance of large-scale propensity score adjustment strategies: Matching, weighting, and stratification.Research square · 2026Article
- Reply to Chirumbolo, "Antimicrobial regimens for the treatment of pan-drug-resistantAntimicrobial agents and chemotherapy · 2026Article
- Mechanical thrombectomy beyond 24 hours from last known well in tandem lesions: A multicenter cohort study.Interventional neuroradiology : journal of peritherapeutic neuroradiology, surgical procedures and related neurosciences · 2026Article
- Enhancing propensity score analysis with data missing not at random: Introducing dual-forest proximity imputation.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Article
- Estimating covariate-balanced survival curve in distributed data environment using data collaboration quasi-experiment.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Individualized decitabine dosing for post-HSCT maintenance in MDS and secondary AML from MDS: long-term outcomes from the PODAC trial and matched controls.Therapeutic advances in hematology · 2026Article
- Early clinical outcomes in emergency CABG in the United Kingdom.Frontiers in cardiovascular medicine · 2026Article
- Medicare Advantage reimbursement structures impact home health delivery and outcomes.The American journal of managed care · 2025Article
- PSM-SMOTE: propensity score matching and synthetic minority oversampling for handling unbalanced microbiome data.Genes & genomics · 2025Article
- Early laparoscopic cholecystectomy after percutaneous transhepatic gallbladder drainage in acute cholecystitis is appropriate and safe: an inverse probability of treatment weighting analysis.European journal of medical research · 2025Article
- Effects of early mobilization within 48 hours of injury in patients with incomplete cervical spinal cord injury.The journal of spinal cord medicine · 2025Observational
- Use of Machine Learning to Compare Disease Risk Scores and Propensity Scores Across Complex Confounding Scenarios: A Simulation Study.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2025Article
- Comparison of Postoperative Nausea and Vomiting Between Sedation with Remimazolam and Dexmedetomidine in Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement Patients: A Single-Center Retrospective Observational Study.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- Long-term clinical outcomes in patients between the age of 50-70 years receiving biological versus mechanical aortic valve prostheses.European journal of cardio-thoracic surgery : official journal of the European Association for Cardio-thoracic Surgery · 2025Article
- Real-world comparison of effectiveness between ustekinumab and a second-line anti-TNF agent in patients with symptomatic stricturing Crohn's disease failing to respond to a first-line anti-TNF agent: the USTEKNOSIS study.Therapeutic advances in gastroenterology · 2025Article
38 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPropensity score (PS) methods are increasingly used, even when sample sizes are small or treatments are seldom used. However, the relative performance of the two mainly recommended PS methods, namely PS-matching or inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW), have not been studied in the context of small sample sizes.
methodsWe conducted a series of Monte Carlo simulations to evaluate the influence of sample size, prevalence of treatment exposure, and strength of the association between the variables and the outcome and/or the treatment exposure, on the performance of these two methods.
resultsDecreasing the sample size from 1,000 to 40 subjects did not substantially alter the Type I error rate, and led to relative biases below 10%. The IPTW method performed better than the PS-matching down to 60 subjects. When N was set at 40, the PS matching estimators were either similarly or even less biased than the IPTW estimators. Including variables unrelated to the exposure but related to the outcome in the PS model decreased the bias and the variance as compared to models omitting such variables. Excluding the true confounder from the PS model resulted, whatever the method used, in a significantly biased estimation of treatment effect. These results were illustrated in a real dataset.
conclusionEven in case of small study samples or low prevalence of treatment, PS-matching and IPTW can yield correct estimations of treatment effect unless the true confounders and the variables related only to the outcome are not included in the PS model.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.