Just a quick follow-up to my prior post on IV. I used a (flawed) treatment/control randomization as an example. My guess is that many people are not aware that the randomization (the coin flip) is an instrumental variable. If this is not clear to you, I highly suggest reading Steve Pizer’s paper on this exact point. His (and my) hope is that it makes IV much more accessible to health services researchers.
Masthead
Editors in Chief
Austin Frakt
Aaron Carroll
Managing Editor
Adrianna McIntyre
Contributors
Kevin Outterson
Bill Gardner
Nicholas Bagley
Other ContributorsRecent posts
- Does Vitamin D Influence Mood?
- How Useful Are Temperature Screenings for Covid?
- Veterans Experience Differences Between VHA and Community Providers
- The Health Of The People Should Be The Supreme Law
- What Can Be Learned From Differing Rates of Suicide Among Groups
- At-Home Testing for Covid
- Bias In, Bias Out
- Come work with me (and colleagues you’ve read here)
- Covid Vaccine Facts with the WHO’s Dr. Kate O’Brien
- Nest Protect and the nuclear option
Archives
For speaking inquiries
Interested in having Aaron or Austin speak to your group?
For information on Aaron speaking, click here.
For information on Austin speaking, contact the Leigh Bureau.
Aaron’s stuff
Selected appearances:
The Colbert Report
Good Morning America
Sound Medicine (most recent)
The Ed ShowAustin’s stuff
Click here for links to Austin’s peer-reviewed publications and/or related posts.
Treatment/control randomization is IV
02/07/2011
Austin Frakt
item.php
Follow the blog
TIE Books
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
Indiebound
iBooks
Google
Kobo
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
iBooks
IndieBound
Powells
Buy at Amazon.com
Summary
Excerpt: Economic profit
Excerpt: Diminishing marginal utility
Excerpt: Four factors of production
Excerpt: Monopoly marginal revenue
Excerpt: Consumer/producer surplus
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Borders
IndieBound
Powells
Borders
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound
Amazon.com
Books-A-Million
Powells
Austin and Aaron are participants in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.Tag cloud
ACA AcademyHealth access accountable care organizations Affordable Care Act announcement blogging cancer comic competitive bidding costs cost shifting COVID-19 employer-sponsored health insurance health care costs Healthcare Triage health insurance health insurance mandates health reform hospital readmissions hospitals individual mandate insurance exchange market power Massachusetts Medicaid Medicare Medicare Advantage mortality nutrition obesity On The Record physicians politics PPACA premiums prescription drugs quality reading list reflex RWJF spending uninsured Upshot vaccines
by Joseph on February 7th, 2011 at 15:16
Yeah, it’s actually the only instrumental variable that I feel comfortable with. In medical research I am very worried about other approaches and worry that they could result in serious amounts of bais due to the complexity of medical problems. Physician preference and geogrpahy are both examples that require fairly tough assumptions to really make work.
by Austin Frakt on February 7th, 2011 at 20:59
@Joseph – I’m with you, but only insofar as RTCs provide the best evidence. I won’t reject other types of studies if they’re all we have. What’s left? Guessing?
Unfortunately we do not have the luxury or the money to do RTCs for everything of interest or import. Then what? I’d rather take a body of work with seemingly good instruments than a bunch of quite bad (and useless) studies that show only correlation. I did a whole series on this. Some observational studies show that Medicaid is associated with worse health outcomes than no insurance at all. Are we to believe that Medicaid makes people even sicker? No! And IV studies show us something closer to the truth, or so I believe (Medicaid is good for health). We’ll never randomize to Medicaid or not. This is the best we’ll get. There are many other examples.
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/tag/medicaid-iv/