S4E10: Quantitative Bias Analysis with Dr. Tim Lash

S4E10: Quantitative Bias Analysis with Dr. Tim Lash

From SERious EPI by Sue Bevan - Society for Epidemiologic Research

May 15, 2025 · 59 min

About this episode

Dr. Timothy Lash discusses Quantitative Bias Analysis and its implications in research.

In this episode we talk to Dr. Timothy Lash of Emory University about Quantitative Bias Analysis (QBA). We talk about how QBA is any method that quantifies the impact of non-random error. We talk about direction magnitude and uncertainty. We differentiate from sensitivity analysis, and we talk about how to identify key sources of bias. We talk about bias models and bias parameters and how we draw inferences from bias analyses. We talk about validation data and where you can get it. We talk about why predictive values often aren’t as useful as classification values for bias analysis. We talk about how bias analysis can strengthen your results and that our intuition about the impact of biases is t always great. And we talk about how bias analysis can guide your future research. We differentiate between simple and probabilistic bias analysis. And we end with some examples of cases where bias analysis is really helpful.

People in this episode

Host: Sue Bevan

Guest: Dr. Timothy Lash

Topics covered

  • Quantitative Bias Analysis
  • non-random error
  • sensitivity analysis
  • bias models
  • predictive values
  • research guidance

Keywords

  • Quantitative Bias Analysis
  • non-random error
  • sensitivity analysis
  • bias models
  • validation data
  • predictive values
  • classification values

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Emory University

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