Estimating sibling spillover effects with unobserved confounding using gain-scores.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

A growing area of research in epidemiology is the identification of health-related sibling spillover effects, or the effect of one individual's exposure on their sibling's outcome. The health within families may be confounded by unobserved factors, rendering identification of sibling spillovers challenging.

Methods

We demonstrate a gain-score (fixed effects) regression method for identifying exposure-to-outcome spillover effects within sibling pairs in linear models. The method identifies the exposure-to-outcome spillover effect if only one sibling's exposure affects the other's outcome, and it identifies the difference between the spillover effects if both siblings' exposures affect the others' outcomes. The method fails with outcome-to-exposure spillover or with ou

SUBMITTER: Mallinson DC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8960330 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature