Sampling Strategies for Internal Validation Samples for Exposure Measurement–Error Correction: A Study of Visceral Adipose Tissue Measures Replaced by Waist Circumference Measures

American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 190, pp. 1935–1947

Abstract

Statistical correction for measurement error in epidemiologic studies is possible, provided that information about the measurement error model and its parameters are available. Such information is commonly obtained from a randomly sampled internal validation sample. It is however unknown whether randomly sampling the internal validation sample is the optimal sampling strategy. We conducted a simulation study to investigate various internal validation sampling strategies in conjunction with regression calibration. Our simulation study showed that for an internal validation study sample of 40% of the main study's sample size, stratified random and extremes sampling had a small efficiency gain over random sampling (10% and 12% decrease on average over all scenarios, respectively). The efficiency gain was more pronounced in smaller validation samples of 10% of the main study's sample size (i.e., a 31% and 36% decrease on average over all scenarios, for stratified random and extremes sampling, respectively). To mitigate the bias due to measurement error in epidemiologic studies, small efficiency gains can be achieved for internal validation sampling strategies other than random, but only when measurement error is nondifferential. For regression calibration, the gain in efficiency is, however, at the cost of a higher percentage bias and lower coverage.

Authors 5

1. Linda Nab corresponding Aachen Correspondence to Linda Nab Department of Clinical Epidemiology

   Leiden University Medical Center

   Affiliation as printed

   Correspondence to Linda Nab, Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Postzone C7-P, P.O. Box 9600, 2300 RC Leiden, the Netherlands (

2. Maarten van Smeden Aachen Department of Clinical Epidemiology

   Leiden University Medical Center

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Clinical Epidemiology , Leiden University Medical Center , Postzone C7-P , P.O. Box 9600 , 2300 RC Leiden , the Netherlands

3. Renée de Mutsert Aachen Department of Clinical Epidemiology

   Leiden University Medical Center

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Clinical Epidemiology , Leiden University Medical Center , Postzone C7-P , P.O. Box 9600 , 2300 RC Leiden , the Netherlands

4. Frits Richard Rosendaal Aachen Department of Clinical Epidemiology

   Leiden University Medical Center

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Clinical Epidemiology , Leiden University Medical Center , Postzone C7-P , P.O. Box 9600 , 2300 RC Leiden , the Netherlands

5. Rolf H. H. Groenwold Aachen Department of Clinical Epidemiology

   Leiden University Medical Center

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Clinical Epidemiology , Leiden University Medical Center , Postzone C7-P , P.O. Box 9600 , 2300 RC Leiden , the Netherlands