Evidence map›Paper›PMID 37588771›Full record

ArticleContemporary clinical trials communications2023

Bias-corrected and doubly robust inference for the three-level longitudinal cluster-randomized trials with missing continuous outcomes and small number of clusters: Simulation study and application to a study for adults with serious mental illnesses.

Chaeryon Kang, Di Zhang, James Schuster, Jane Kogan, Cara Nikolajski, Charles F Reynolds

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Article in Contemporary clinical trials communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors.

Chaeryon KangDepartment of Biostatistics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA.
Di ZhangDepartment of Biostatistics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA.
James SchusterUPMC Health Plan, Pittsburgh, PA 15219, USA.
Jane KoganUPMC Center for High-Value Health Care, Pittsburgh, PA 15219, USA.
Cara NikolajskiUPMC Center for High-Value Health Care, Pittsburgh, PA 15219, USA.
Charles F ReynoldsDepartment of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Longitudinal cluster-randomized designs have been popular tools for comparative effective research in clinical trials. The methodologies for the three-level hierarchical design with longitudinal outcomes need to be better understood under more pragmatic settings; that is, with a small number of clusters, heterogeneous cluster sizes, and missing outcomes. Generalized estimating equations (GEEs) have been frequently used when the distribution of data and the correlation model are unknown. Standard GEEs lead to bias and an inflated type I error rate due to the small number of available clinics and non-completely random missing data in longitudinal outcomes. We evaluate the performance of inverse probability weighted (IPW) estimating equations, with and without augmentation, for two types of missing data in continuous outcomes and individual-level treatment allocation mechanisms combined with two bias-corrected variance estimators. Our intensive simulation results suggest that the proposed augmented IPW method with bias-corrected variance estimation successfully prevents the inflation of false positive findings and improves efficiency when the number of clinics is small, with moderate to severe missing outcomes. Our findings are expected to aid researchers in choosing appropriate analysis methods for three-level longitudinal cluster-randomized designs. The proposed approaches were applied to analyze data from a longitudinal cluster-randomized clinical trial involving adults with serious mental illnesses.

Indexed as

Augmented inverse probability weighted estimatorBias-corrected varianceLongitudinal cluster-randomizationMissing at randomSmall number of clusters

Identifiers

PMID37588771
PMCPMC10425901

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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.