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Using the Standardized Difference to Compare the Prevalence of a Binary Variable Between Two Groups in Observational Research
Abstract
Researchers are increasingly using the standardized difference to compare the distribution of baseline covariates between treatment groups in observational studies. Standardized differences were initially developed in the context of comparing the mean of continuous variables between two groups. However, in medical research, many baseline covariates are dichotomous. In this article, we explore the utility and interpretation of the standardized difference for comparing the prevalence of dichotomous variables between two groups. We examined the relationship between the standardized difference, and the maximal difference in the prevalence of the binary variable between two groups, the relative risk relating the prevalence of the binary variable in one group compared to the prevalence in the other group, and the phi coefficient for measuring correlation between the treatment group and the binary variable. We found that a standardized difference of 10% (or 0.1) is equivalent to having a phi coefficient of 0.05 (indicating negligible correlation) for the correlation between treatment group and the binary variable.
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Cites
Statistical Methods for Rates and Proportions
Fleiss, J. L., Levin, B., & Paik, M. C. (2003) · Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics · doi:10.1002/0471445428 · Cited by 18,646
Cited by
Austin, P. C. (2011) · Multivariate Behavioral Research · doi:10.1080/00273171.2011.568786 · Cited by 12,242
Self-citationMatching Methods for Causal Inference: A Review and a Look Forward
Stuart, E. A. (2010) · Statistical Science · doi:10.1214/09-sts313 · Cited by 5,478
Austin, P. C., & Stuart, E. A. (2015) · Statistics in Medicine · doi:10.1002/sim.6607 · Cited by 4,495
Self-citationDesai, R. J., & Franklin, J. M. (2019) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.l5657 · Cited by 657
Effects of Previous Infection and Vaccination on Symptomatic Omicron Infections
Altarawneh, H. N., Chemaitelly, H., Ayoub, H. H., Tang, P., Hasan, M. R., Yassine, H. M., Al-Khatib, H. A., Smatti, M. K., Coyle, P., Al-Kanaani, Z., et al. (2022) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmoa2203965 · Cited by 551
Metadata
- Authors
- Austin, P. C.
- Venue
- Communications in Statistics - Simulation and Computation
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2009-04-09
- Volume
- 38
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1228-1234
- ISSN
- 0361-0918 (ISSN-L)
- 1532-4141
- OpenAlex
- W2049491523
- Cited by
- 2,445
- References
- 1
- FWCI
- 9.02
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Austin, P. C. (2009). Using the Standardized Difference to Compare the Prevalence of a Binary Variable Between Two Groups in Observational Research. Communications in Statistics - Simulation and Computation. https://doi.org/10.1080/03610910902859574
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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