Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Bivariate Generalization Of The Time-To-Event Conditional Reassessment Method With A Novel Adaptive Randomization Method, Donglin Yan

Theses and Dissertations--Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Phase I clinical trials in oncology aim to evaluate the toxicity risk of new therapies and identify a safe but also effective dose for future studies. Traditional Phase I trials of chemotherapies focus on estimating the maximum tolerated dose (MTD). The rationale for finding the MTD is that better therapeutic effects are expected at higher dose levels as long as the risk of severe toxicity is acceptable. With the advent of a new generation of cancer treatments such as the molecularly targeted agents (MTAs) and immunotherapies, higher dose levels no longer guarantee increased therapeutic effects, and the focus has shifted …

Improved Methods And Selecting Classification Types For Time-Dependent Covariates In The Marginal Analysis Of Longitudinal Data, I-Chen Chen

Theses and Dissertations--Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Generalized estimating equations (GEE) are popularly utilized for the marginal analysis of longitudinal data. In order to obtain consistent regression parameter estimates, these estimating equations must be unbiased. However, when certain types of time-dependent covariates are presented, these equations can be biased unless an independence working correlation structure is employed. Moreover, in this case regression parameter estimation can be very inefficient because not all valid moment conditions are incorporated within the corresponding estimating equations. Therefore, approaches using the generalized method of moments or quadratic inference functions have been proposed for utilizing all valid moment conditions. However, we have found that …

Using Prescription Drug Monitoring Data To Inform Population Level Analysis Of Opioid Analgesic Utilization, Huong T. T. Luu

Theses and Dissertations--Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Increased opioid analgesic (OA) prescribing has been associated with increased risk of prescription opioid diversion, misuse, and abuse. States established prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) to collect and analyze electronic records for dispensed controlled substances to reduce prescription drug abuse and diversion. PDMP data can be used by prescribers for tracking patient’s history of controlled substance prescribing to inform clinical decisions.

The studies in this dissertation are focused on the less utilized potential of the PDMP data to enhance public health surveillance to monitor OA prescribing and co-prescribing and association with opioid overdose mortality and morbidity. Longitudinal analysis of OA …

Improved Standard Error Estimation For Maintaining The Validities Of Inference In Small-Sample Cluster Randomized Trials And Longitudinal Studies, Whitney Ford Tanner

Theses and Dissertations--Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Data arising from Cluster Randomized Trials (CRTs) and longitudinal studies are correlated and generalized estimating equations (GEE) are a popular analysis method for correlated data. Previous research has shown that analyses using GEE could result in liberal inference due to the use of the empirical sandwich covariance matrix estimator, which can yield negatively biased standard error estimates when the number of clusters or subjects is not large. Many techniques have been presented to correct this negative bias; However, use of these corrections can still result in biased standard error estimates and thus test sizes that are not consistently at their …