Statistical Considerations for Analyzing Data Derived from Long Longitudinal Cohort Studies

Abstract

Modern science is frequently based on the exploitation of large volumes of information storage in datasets and involving complex computational architectures. The statistical analyses of these datasets have to cope with specific challenges and frequently involve making informed but arbitrary decisions. Epidemiological papers have to be concise and focused on the underlying clinical or epidemiological results, not reporting the details behind relevant methodological decisions. In this work, we used an analysis of the cardiovascular-related measures tracked in 4–8-year-old children, using data from the INMA-Asturias cohort for illustrating how the decision-making process was performed and its potential impact on the obtained results. We focused on two particular aspects of the problem: how to deal with missing data and which regression model to use to evaluate tracking when there are no defined thresholds to categorize variables into risk groups. As a spoiler, we analyzed the impact on our results of using multiple imputation and the advantage of using quantile regression models in this context.