IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v7y2010i2p380-394d6981.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On Application of the Empirical Bayes Shrinkage in Epidemiological Settings

Author

Listed:
  • Yuejen Zhao

    (Institute of Advanced Studies, Charles Darwin University, Darwin NT 0909, Australia
    Health Gains Planning Branch, Department of Health and Families, NT 0801, Australia)

  • Andy H. Lee

    (School of Public Health, Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology, WA 6845, Australia)

  • Tony Barnes

    (Institute of Advanced Studies, Charles Darwin University, Darwin NT 0909, Australia)

Abstract

This paper aims to provide direct and indirect evidence on setting up rules for applications of the empirical Bayes shrinkage (EBS), and offers cautionary remarks concerning its applicability. In epidemiology, there is still a lack of relevant criteria in the application of EBS. The bias of the shrinkage estimator is investigated in terms of the sums of errors, squared errors and absolute errors, for both total and individual groups. The study reveals that assessing the underlying exchangeability assumption is important for appropriate use of EBS. The performance of EBS is indicated by a ratio statistic f of the between-group and within-group mean variances. If there are significant differences between the sample means, EBS is likely to produce erratic and even misleading information.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuejen Zhao & Andy H. Lee & Tony Barnes, 2010. "On Application of the Empirical Bayes Shrinkage in Epidemiological Settings," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-15, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:7:y:2010:i:2:p:380-394:d:6981
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/2/380/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/2/380/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Casper, M. & Wing, S. & Strogatz, D. & Davis, C.E. & Tyroler, H.A., 1992. "Antihypertensive treatment and US trends in stroke mortality, 1962 to 1980," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 82(12), pages 1600-1606.
    2. repec:mpr:mprres:3516 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Sander Greenland, 2000. "When Should Epidemiologic Regressions Use Random Coefficients?," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 56(3), pages 915-921, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yeojin Chung & Sophia Rabe-Hesketh & Vincent Dorie & Andrew Gelman & Jingchen Liu, 2013. "A Nondegenerate Penalized Likelihood Estimator for Variance Parameters in Multilevel Models," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 78(4), pages 685-709, October.
    2. Fabian Dunker & Konstantin Eckle & Katharina Proksch & Johannes Schmidt-Hieber, 2017. "Tests for qualitative features in the random coefficients model," Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers 225, Courant Research Centre PEG.
    3. Sander Greenland, 2005. "Discussion on "Statistical Issues Arising in the Women's Health Initiative"," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 61(4), pages 920-921, December.
    4. Masataka Taguri, 2022. "Discussion of “Akaike Memorial Lecture 2020: Some of the challenges of statistical applications”," Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Springer;The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, vol. 74(4), pages 643-647, August.
    5. Sander Greenland & Heidi J. Fischer & Leeka Kheifets, 2016. "Methods to Explore Uncertainty and Bias Introduced by Job Exposure Matrices," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(1), pages 74-82, January.
    6. Paul Gustafson & Sander Greenland, 2006. "The Performance of Random Coefficient Regression in Accounting for Residual Confounding," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 62(3), pages 760-768, September.
    7. Paul Gustafson, 2006. "Sample size implications when biases are modelled rather than ignored," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 169(4), pages 865-881, October.
    8. Jon Wakefield, 2004. "Ecological inference for 2 × 2 tables (with discussion)," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 167(3), pages 385-445, July.
    9. Sander Greenland, 2001. "Putting Background Information About Relative Risks into Conjugate Prior Distributions," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 57(3), pages 663-670, September.
    10. Sander Greenland, 2003. "Generalized Conjugate Priors for Bayesian Analysis of Risk and Survival Regressions," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 59(1), pages 92-99, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:7:y:2010:i:2:p:380-394:d:6981. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.