ouR data generation

I am currently wrestling with how to analyze data from a stepped-wedge designed cluster randomized trial. A few factors make this analysis particularly interesting. First, we want to allow for the possibility that between-period site-level correlation will decrease (or decay) over time. Second, there is possibly additional clustering at the patient level since individual outcomes will be measured repeatedly over time. And third, given that these outcomes are binary, there are no obvious software tools that can handle generalized linear models with this particular variance structure we want to model. [Read More]

The ROC (receiver operating characteristic) curve visually depicts the ability of a measure or classification model to distinguish two groups. The area under the ROC (AUC), quantifies the extent of that ability. My goal here is to describe as simply as possible a process that serves as a foundation for the ROC, and to provide an interpretation of the AUC that is defined by that curve. A prediction problem The classic application for the ROC is a medical test designed to identify individuals with a particular medical condition or disease. [Read More]

I’m participating in the design of a new study that will evaluate interventions aimed at reducing both pain and opioid use for patients on dialysis. This study is likely to be somewhat complicated, possibly involving multiple clusters, multiple interventions, a sequential and/or adaptive randomization scheme, and a composite binary outcome. I’m not going into any of that here. There is one issue that should be fairly generalizable to other studies. It is likely that individual measures will be collected repeatedly over time but the primary outcome of interest will be the measure collected during the last follow-up period. [Read More]

I am contemplating adding a new distribution option to the package simstudy that would allow users to define a new variable as a mixture of previously defined (or already generated) variables. I think the easiest way to explain how to apply the new mixture option is to step through a few examples and see it in action. Specifying the “mixture” distribution As defined here, a mixture of variables is a random draw from a set of variables based on a defined set of probabilities. [Read More]

I am involved with a very interesting project - the NIA IMPACT Collaboratory - where a primary goal is to fund a large group of pragmatic pilot studies to investigate promising interventions to improve health care and quality of life for people living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. One of my roles on the project team is to advise potential applicants on the development of their proposals. In order to provide helpful advice, it is important that we understand what we should actually expect to learn from a relatively small pilot study of a new intervention. [Read More]

A couple of months ago, I was contacted about the possibility of creating a simple function in simstudy to generate a large dataset that could include possibly 10’s or 100’s of potential predictors and an outcome. In this function, only a subset of the variables would actually be predictors. The idea is to be able to easily generate data for exploring ridge regression, Lasso regression, or other “regularization” methods. Alternatively, this can be used to very quickly generate correlated data (with one line of code) without going through the definition process. [Read More]

I am collaborating with a number of folks who think a lot about palliative or supportive care for people who are facing end-stage disease, such as advanced dementia, cancer, COPD, or congestive heart failure. A major concern for this population (which really includes just about everyone at some point) is the quality of life at the end of life and what kind of experiences, including interactions with the health care system, they have (and don’t have) before death. [Read More]

“I am working on a simulation study that requires me to generate data for individuals within clusters, but each individual will have repeated measures (say baseline and two follow-ups). I’m new to simstudy and have been going through the examples in R this afternoon, but I wondered if this was possible in the package, and if so whether you could offer any tips to get me started with how I would do this? [Read More]

In a current multi-site study, we are using a stepped-wedge design to evaluate whether improved training and protocols can reduce prescriptions of anti-psychotic medication for home hospice care patients with advanced dementia. The study is officially called the Hospice Advanced Dementia Symptom Management and Quality of Life (HAS-QOL) Stepped Wedge Trial. Unlike my previous work with stepped-wedge designs, where individuals were measured once in the course of the study, this study will collect patient outcomes from the home hospice care EHRs over time. [Read More]

A key motivating factor for the simstudy package and much of this blog is that simulation can be super helpful in understanding how best to approach an unusual, or least unfamiliar, analytic problem. About six months ago, I described the DREAM Initiative (Diabetes Research, Education, and Action for Minorities), a study that used a slightly innovative randomization scheme to ensure that two comparison groups were evenly balanced across important covariates. At the time, we hadn’t finalized the analytic plan. [Read More]