Handling missing data in propensity score estimation in comparative effectiveness evaluations: a systematic review

Aim Even though systematic reviews have examined how aspects of propensity score methods are used, none has reviewed how the challenge of missing data is addressed with these methods. This review there-fore describes how missing data are addressed with propensity score methods in observational comparative effectiveness studies. Methods Published articles on observational comparative effectiveness studies were extracted from MEDLINE and EMBASE databases. Results Our search yielded 167 eligible articles. Majority of these studies (114; 68%) conducted complete case analysis with only 53 of them stating this in the methods. Only 16 articles reported use of multiple imputation. Conclusion Few researchers use correct methods for handling missing data or reported missing data methodology which may lead to reporting biased findings.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research

• Publication date

  2017-10-05

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Economics

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.2217/cer-2017-0071PMID 28980833PMCID 6478118
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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