Simulations and directed acyclic graphs explained why assortative mating biases the prenatal negative control design.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

The negative control design can be used to provide evidence for whether a prenatal exposure-outcome association occurs by in utero mechanisms. Assortative mating has been suggested to influence results from negative control designs, although how and why has not yet been adequately explained. We aimed to explain why mutual adjustment of maternal and paternal exposure in regression models can account for assortative mating.

Study design and setting

We used directed acyclic graphs to show how bias can occur when modeling maternal and paternal effects separately. We empirically tested our claims using a simulation study. We investigated how increasing assortative mating influences the bias of effect estimates obtained from models that do and do not use a mutual adjustm

SUBMITTER: Madley-Dowd P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7001034 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature