Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Feb 8;10(2):220267.
doi: 10.1098/rsos.220267. eCollection 2023 Feb.

Missing observations in regression: a conditional approach

H S Battey  1 , D R Cox  2
Affiliations

Missing observations in regression: a conditional approach

H S Battey et al. R Soc Open Sci. .

Abstract

This note presents an alternative to multiple imputation and other approaches to regression analysis in the presence of missing covariate data. Our recommendation, based on factorial and fractional factorial arrangements, is more faithful to ancillarity considerations of regression analysis and involves assessing the sensitivity of inference on each regression parameter to missingness in each of the explanatory variables. The ideas are illustrated on a medical example concerned with the success of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in children, and on a sociological example concerned with socio-economic inequalities in educational attainment.

Keywords: EM algorithm; Hadamard matrix; ancillarity; fractional factorial; missing data; regression.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

We declare we have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Convex hull of the four treatment combinations specified by the two half-replicates of the 23 factorial.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Fisher RA. 1925. Theory of statistical estimation. Proc. Camb. Philol. Soc. 22, 700-725. (10.1017/S0305004100009580) - DOI
    1. Efron BE. 1977. Discussion of ‘Maximum likelihood from incomplete data via the EM algorithm’ by Dempster, Liard and Rubin. J. R. Statist. Soc. B 39, 29. (10.1111/j.2517-6161.1977.tb01600.x) - DOI
    1. Efron BE. 1982. Maximum likelihood and decision theory. Ann. Statist. 10, 340-356. (10.1214/aos/1176345778) - DOI
    1. Sundberg R. 1974. Maximum likelihood theory for incomplete data from an exponential family. Scand. J. Statist. 1, 49-58.
    1. Dempster AP, Laird NM, Rubin DB. 1977. Maximum likelihood from incomplete data via the EM algorithm. J. R. Statist. Soc. B 39, 1-38. (10.1111/j.2517-6161.1977.tb01600.x) - DOI