ReviewEuropean journal of epidemiology2019
A descriptive review of variable selection methods in four epidemiologic journals: there is still room for improvement.
Review in European journal of epidemiology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 52 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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
52 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Time-stratified prognostic factors for poor renal outcomes in childhood-onset lupus nephritis: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Pooled it
- Causal Model Building in the Context of Cardiac Rehabilitation: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Trial
- Temporal Trends and Outcomes in Low-Risk Patients Undergoing TAVI: Insights From the LAPLACE-TAVI Registry.JACC. Asia · 2026Article
- Compositional analyses of accelerometer-measured 24-h movement behaviors among adults with normoglycemia, pre-diabetes phenotypes, and diabetes: a population-based study.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2026Article
- Cardiac self efficacy and Mediterranean diet adherence in patients with coronary heart disease.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Factors Influencing Functional Recovery in People After Chronic Critical Illness During Early Neurological Rehabilitation.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare · 2026Article
- Adaptive Sparsening and Smoothing of the Treatment Model for Longitudinal Causal Inference Using Outcome-Adaptive LASSO and Marginal Fused LASSO.Statistics in medicine · 2026Article
- Evaluating multivariable prediction models for Parkinson's disease prognosis: a scoping review protocol.BMJ open · 2025Article
- Covariate selection strategies and estimands - a review of current practice of risk factor analysis from a causal perspective.BMC medical research methodology · 2025Review
- Individual-Level Exposure to Light at Night and Sleep Health: A Comparison between Real-Time Mobility-Based Measurements and Indoor Residence-Based Measurements.Environmental science & technology · 2025Article
- Design, Conduct, and Analysis of Externally Controlled Trials.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- Evaluation of PD-L1, TERT promoter mutations, and BRAFV600E mutation in poorly differentiated, differentiated high grade thyroid carcinoma and anaplastic carcinoma of the thyroid: our institutional experience.Virchows Archiv : an international journal of pathology · 2025Article
- Physical functioning before knee arthroplasty is not associated with (standardized) preoperative physiotherapy, but is tied to physical functioning 1-year post-surgery: A prospective cohort study.Journal of orthopaedics · 2025Article
- The association between dairy and bone quality in Puerto Rican adults varies by dairy food and fat content.JBMR plus · 2025Article
- Variable selection for causal inference, prediction, and descriptive research: a narrative review of recommendations.European heart journal open · 2025Review
- Confounder adjustment in observational studies investigating multiple risk factors: a methodological study.BMC medicine · 2025Article
- Performance of cohort-adapted dietary and lifestyle inflammation scores among Hispanic adults.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
- Predictive value of perilesional edema volume in melanoma brain metastasis response to stereotactic radiosurgery.Journal of neuro-oncology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
A review of epidemiological papers conducted in 2009 concluded that several studies employed variable selection methods susceptible to introduce bias and yield inadequate inferences. Many new confounder selection methods have been developed since then. The goal of the study was to provide an updated descriptive portrait of which variable selection methods are used by epidemiologists for analyzing observational data. Studies published in four major epidemiological journals in 2015 were reviewed. Only articles concerned with a predictive or explicative objective and reporting on the analysis of individual data were included. Method(s) employed for selecting variables were extracted from retained articles. A total of 975 articles were retrieved and 299 met eligibility criteria, 292 of which pursued an explicative objective. Among those, 146 studies (50%) reported using prior knowledge or causal graphs for selecting variables, 34 (12%) used change in effect estimate methods, 26 (9%) used stepwise approaches, 16 (5%) employed univariate analyses, 5 (2%) used various other methods and 107 (37%) did not provide sufficient details to allow classification (more than one method could be employed in a single article). Despite being less frequent than in the previous review, stepwise and univariable analyses, which are susceptible to introduce bias and produce inadequate inferences, were still prevalent. Moreover, 37% studies did not provide sufficient details to assess how variables were selected. We thus believe there is still room for improvement in variable selection methods used by epidemiologists and in their reporting.
Indexed as
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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.