Causal Analyses of Nested Case-Control Studies for Comparative Effectiveness Research [Methods Study], Washington, 2018-2021 (ICPSR 39715)
A randomized controlled trial, or RCT, is the best way to compare how well different treatments work to improve patients' health. In RCTs, researchers assign patients to treatment groups by chance. But RCTs aren't always an option due to high costs or ethical concerns. In these cases, researchers use other types of study designs such as
- Cohort studies, which look at patients' data over time to see how a treatment affects the risk of a certain health event, such as a heart attack
- Case-control studies, which compare data from patients who did and didn't have a certain health event
These designs often use data from health records to compare treatment results. In these studies, researchers use statistical methods to make results more like results from RCTs. Current methods work well for cohort studies but not for case-control studies.
In this study, the research team created and tested new methods and a guide to analyze case-control studies so that results would be more like results from an RCT.