An evaluation of common methods for dichotomization of continuous variables to discriminate disease status.

ABSTRACT: Dichotomization of continuous variables to discriminate a dichotomous outcome is often useful in statistical applications. If a true threshold for a continuous variable exists, the challenge is identifying it. This paper examines common methods for dichotomization to identify which ones recover a true threshold. We provide mathematical and numeric proofs demonstrating that maximizing the odds ratio, Youden's statistic, Gini Index, chi-square statistic, relative risk and kappa statistic all theoretically recover a true threshold. A simulation study evaluating the ability of these statistics to recover a threshold when sampling from a population indicates that maximizing the chi-square statistic and Gini Index have the smallest bias and variability when the probability of being larger than t

SUBMITTER: Prince Nelson SL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6020169 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature