The partial questionnaire design for case-control studies.
We propose an alternative to a long questionnaire that may increase quality while reducing the cost and effort of participants and researchers. In the 'partial questionnaire design', information about the exposure of interest is obtained from all subjects, while zero, one, or more disjoint subsets of questions about possible confounders are asked to randomly selected subgroups. The proposed analyses exploit the fact that the uncollected data can be considered to be missing at random. We show that it is possible to obtain high efficiency for estimating the effect of exposure of interest, adjusted for confounding, while substantially shortening average questionnaire length.
Wacholder
S
S
National Cancer Institute, Biostatistics Branch, Rockville, MD 20852.
Carroll
R J
RJ
Pee
D
D
Gail
M H
MH
D015982:Bias; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008487:Medical History Taking / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D009062:Mouth Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology / Q000517:prevention & control; D016017:Odds Ratio; D010610:Pharyngeal Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology / Q000517:prevention & control; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012307:Risk Factors; D012907:Smoking / Q000009:adverse effects; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000191:economics