Case-Control Studies with Jointly Misclassified Exposure and Confounding Variables

Abstract

The issue of 2 × 2 × 2 case-control studies is addressed when both exposure and confounding variables are jointly misclassified. Two scenarios are considered: the classification errors of exposure and confounding variables are independent or not independent. The bias-adjusted cell probability estimates which account for the misclassification bias are presented. The effect of misclassification on the measure of crude odds ratio either unstratified or stratified by the confounder, Mantel-Haenszel summary odds ratio, the confounding component in the crude odds ratio, the first and second order multiplicative interaction are assessed through the sensitivity analysis from using the data on the asthma deaths of 5-45 aged patients in New Zealand.