ArticleAmerican journal of epidemiology2016
Invited Commentary: Beware the Test-Negative Design.
Article in American journal of epidemiology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
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
32 citing papers in PubMed.
- The validity of test-negative design for assessment of typhoid conjugate vaccine protection: comparison of estimates by different study designs using data from a cluster-randomised controlled trial.The Lancet. Global health · 2025Trial
- Stochastic interventional approach to assessing immune correlates of protection: Application to the COVE messenger RNA-1273 vaccine trial.International journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases · 2023Trial
- Typhoid conjugate vaccine effectiveness in Malawi: evaluation of a test-negative design using randomised, controlled clinical trial data.The Lancet. Global health · 2023Trial
- Statistical methods for estimating the protective effects of immune markers using test-negative designs.American journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Use of the test-negative design to estimate the protective effect of a scalar immune measure: a simulation analysis.American journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Proposed study design for estimating COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness in post-pandemic Taiwan.Journal of the Chinese Medical Association : JCMA · 2026Article
- Impact of unequal testing on vaccine effectiveness estimates across two study designs: a simulation study.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Designs for Vaccine Studies.Annual review of statistics and its application · 2025Article
- Bias and negative values of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness estimates from a test-negative design without controlling for prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Severity-dependent test-seeking behaviors and test-negative designs: impact on estimated vaccine effectiveness and utility of analytic and design choices.American journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- Comparative effectiveness of alternative intervals between first and second doses of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Bias assessment of a test-negative design study of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness used in national policymaking.Nature communications · 2023Article
- RANDOMIZATION INFERENCE FOR CLUSTER-RANDOMIZED TEST-NEGATIVE DESIGNS WITH APPLICATION TO DENGUE STUDIES: UNBIASED ESTIMATION, PARTIAL COMPLIANCE, AND STEPPED-WEDGE DESIGN.The annals of applied statistics · 2023Article
- Effectiveness of Booster Doses of Monovalent mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine Against Symptomatic Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Infection in Children, Adolescents, and Adults During Omicron Subvariant BA.2/BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/BA.5 Predominant Periods.Open forum infectious diseases · 2023Article
- The effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against severe cases and deaths in Brazil from 2021 to 2022: a registry-based study.Lancet regional health. Americas · 2023Article
- Association of cannabis use during pregnancy with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection: a retrospective cohort study.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2023Article
- Waning effectiveness of BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1 covid-19 vaccines over six months since second dose: OpenSAFELY cohort study using linked electronic health records.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2022Article
- Short term, relative effectiveness of four doses versus three doses of BNT162b2 vaccine in people aged 60 years and older in Israel: retrospective, test negative, case-control study.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2022Article
- Immune correlates analysis using vaccinees from test negative designs.Biostatistics (Oxford, England) · 2022Article
- Effectiveness of the BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) and the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (Oxford-AstraZeneca) vaccines for reducing susceptibility to infection with the Delta variant (B.1.617.2) of SARS-CoV-2.BMC infectious diseases · 2022Article
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2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In this issue of the Journal, Sullivan et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2016;184(5):345-353) carefully examine the theoretical justification for use of the test-negative design, a common observational study design, in assessing the effectiveness of influenza vaccination. Using modern causal inference methods (in particular, directed acyclic graphs), they describe different threats to the validity of inferences drawn about the effect of vaccination from test-negative design studies. These threats include confounding, selection bias, and measurement error in either the exposure or the outcome. While confounding and measurement error are common in observational studies, the potential for selection bias inherent in the test-negative design brings into question the validity of inferences drawn from such studies.
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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.