Differential Attrition

William H. Yeaton, Paul M. Wortman and Naftali Langberg
Additional contact information
William H. Yeaton: Institute for Social Research
Paul M. Wortman: School of Public Health and Institute for Social Research The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
Naftali Langberg: University of Haifa

Evaluation Review, 1983, vol. 7, issue 6, 831-840

Abstract: The differential attrition of persons from comparison groups severely restricts the inferences that can be made from results of evaluative research. This problem is particularly troublesome in the evaluation of medical technologies, such as coronary artery bypass graft surgery, since a substantial percentage of medical or control patients cross over to the surgical group. A procedure using worst case assumptions is developed that allows researchers to estimate the maximum effect of differential attrition, and therefore enhance the quality of their inferences. The article first illustrates theprocedure, then concludes with a discussion of the generality of the estimation procedure to other instances in which differential attrition is a problem, and points out the limitations of the approach.

Date: 1983
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0193841X8300700607 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:evarev:v:7:y:1983:i:6:p:831-840

DOI: 10.1177/0193841X8300700607

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Evaluation Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().