Evidence map›Paper›PMID 26977131›Full record

ArticleShanghai archives of psychiatry2015

The effect of simple imputation on inferences about population means when data are missing in biomedical research due to detection limits.

Hongyue Wang, Guanqing Chen, Xiang Lu, Hui Zhang, Changyong Feng

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Shanghai archives of psychiatry, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Hongyue WangDepartments of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY.
Guanqing ChenDepartments of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY.
Xiang LuDepartments of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY.
Hui ZhangDepartment of Biostatistics, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN.
Changyong FengDepartments of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY; Department of Anesthesiology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The sample geometric mean has been widely used in biomedical and psychosocial research to estimate and compare population geometric means. However, due to the detection limit of measurement instruments, the actual value of the measurement is not always observable. A common practice to deal with this problem is to replace missing values by small positive constants and make inferences based on the imputed data. However, no work has been carried out to study the effect of this naïve imputation method on inference. In this report, we show that this simple imputation method may dramatically change the reported outcomes of a study and, thus, make the results uninterpretable, even if the detection limit is very small.

Indexed as

population geometric meansample geometric meantwo-sample test

Identifiers

PMID26977131
PMCPMC4764008

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-SA
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.