ArticleEnvironmental health : a global access science source2019
Measurement error in a multi-level analysis of air pollution and health: a simulation study.
Article in Environmental health : a global access science source, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Mortality and Morbidity Effects of Long-Term Exposure to Low-Level PMResearch report (Health Effects Institute) · 2021Pooled it
- Exposure measurement error in air-pollution epidemiology and its determinants: results from the MELONS study.International journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Investigating the Consequences of Measurement Error of Gradually More Sophisticated Long-Term Personal Exposure Models in Assessing Health Effects: The London Study (MELONS).Research report (Health Effects Institute) · 2025Article
- Personal and community-level exposure to air pollution and daily changes in respiratory symptoms and oxygen saturation among adults with COPD.Hygiene and environmental health advances · 2023Article
- Measurement error correction for ambient PMEnvironmental research · 2023Article
- Invited Perspective: Impact of Exposure Measurement Error on Effect Estimates-An Important and Neglected Problem in Air Pollution Epidemiology.Environmental health perspectives · 2022Article
- The Impact of Exposure Measurement Error on the Estimated Concentration-Response Relationship between Long-Term Exposure toEnvironmental health perspectives · 2022Article
- Assessing the health estimation capacity of air pollution exposure prediction models.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2022Article
- Impact of local air quality management policies on emergency hospitalisations for respiratory conditions in the North West Coast region of England: a longitudinal controlled ecological study.International journal for equity in health · 2021Article
- Multivariate Spatial Prediction of Air Pollutant Concentrations with INLA.Environmental research communications · 2021Article
- Personal exposure to air pollution and respiratory health of COPD patients in London.The European respiratory journal · 2021Article
- Fine-Scale Air Pollution Models for Epidemiologic Research: Insights From Approaches Developed in the Multi-ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and Air Pollution (MESA Air).Current environmental health reports · 2021Review
- Assessing additive effects of air pollutants on mortality rate in Massachusetts.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2021Article
- Comparing the performance of air pollution models for nitrogen dioxide and ozone in the context of a multilevel epidemiological analysis.Environmental epidemiology (Philadelphia, Pa.) · 2020Article
- Exposure Measurement Error in Air Pollution Studies: The Impact of Shared, Multiplicative Measurement Error on Epidemiological Health Risk Estimates.Air quality, atmosphere, & health · 2020Article
- The impact of measurement error in modeled ambient particles exposures on health effect estimates in multilevel analysis: A simulation study.Environmental epidemiology (Philadelphia, Pa.) · 2020Article
- Who Could Not Avoid Exposure to High Levels of Residence-Based Pollution by Daily Mobility? Evidence of Air Pollution Exposure from the Perspective of the Neighborhood Effect Averaging Problem (NEAP).International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundSpatio-temporal models are increasingly being used to predict exposure to ambient outdoor air pollution at high spatial resolution for inclusion in epidemiological analyses of air pollution and health. Measurement error in these predictions can nevertheless have impacts on health effect estimation. Using statistical simulation we aim to investigate the effects of such error within a multi-level model analysis of long and short-term pollutant exposure and health.
methodsOur study was based on a theoretical sample of 1000 geographical sites within Greater London. Simulations of "true" site-specific daily mean and 5-year mean NO
resultsIn general, health effect estimates associated with both long and short-term exposure were biased towards the null with the level of bias increasing to over 60% as the correlation coefficient decreased from 0.9 to 0.5 and the variance ratio increased from 0.5 to 2. However, for a combination of high correlation (0.9) and small variance ratio (0.5) non-trivial bias (> 25%) away from the null was observed. Standard errors of health effect estimates, though unaffected by changes in the correlation coefficient, appeared to be attenuated for variance ratios > 1 but inflated for variance ratios < 1.
conclusionWhile our findings suggest that in most cases modelling errors result in attenuation of the effect estimate towards the null, in some situations a non-trivial bias away from the null may occur. The magnitude and direction of bias appears to depend on the relationship between modelled and "true" data in terms of their correlation and the ratio of their variances. These factors should be taken into account when assessing the validity of modelled air pollution predictions for use in complex epidemiological models.
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