Obtaining appropriate interval estimates for age when multiple indicators are used: evaluation of an ad-hoc procedure

TY - JOUR

T1 - Obtaining appropriate interval estimates for age when multiple indicators are used

T2 - evaluation of an ad-hoc procedure

AU - Fieuws, Steffen

AU - Willems, Guy

AU - Larsen, Sara Tangmose

AU - Lynnerup, Niels

AU - Boldsen, Jesper

AU - Thevissen, Patrick

PY - 2016/3/1

Y1 - 2016/3/1

N2 - When an estimate of age is needed, typically multiple indicators are present as found in skeletal or dental information. There exists a vast literature on approaches to estimate age from such multivariate data. Application of Bayes' rule has been proposed to overcome drawbacks of classical regression models but becomes less trivial as soon as the number of indicators increases. Each of the age indicators can lead to a different point estimate ("the most plausible value for age") and a prediction interval ("the range of possible values"). The major challenge in the combination of multiple indicators is not the calculation of a combined point estimate for age but the construction of an appropriate prediction interval. Ignoring the correlation between the age indicators results in intervals being too small. Boldsen et al. (2002) presented an ad-hoc procedure to construct an approximate confidence interval without the need to model the multivariate correlation structure between the indicators. The aim of the present paper is to bring under attention this pragmatic approach and to evaluate its performance in a practical setting. This is all the more needed since recent publications ignore the need for interval estimation. To illustrate and evaluate the method, Köhler et al. (1995) third molar scores are used to estimate the age in a dataset of 3200 male subjects in the juvenile age range.

AB - When an estimate of age is needed, typically multiple indicators are present as found in skeletal or dental information. There exists a vast literature on approaches to estimate age from such multivariate data. Application of Bayes' rule has been proposed to overcome drawbacks of classical regression models but becomes less trivial as soon as the number of indicators increases. Each of the age indicators can lead to a different point estimate ("the most plausible value for age") and a prediction interval ("the range of possible values"). The major challenge in the combination of multiple indicators is not the calculation of a combined point estimate for age but the construction of an appropriate prediction interval. Ignoring the correlation between the age indicators results in intervals being too small. Boldsen et al. (2002) presented an ad-hoc procedure to construct an approximate confidence interval without the need to model the multivariate correlation structure between the indicators. The aim of the present paper is to bring under attention this pragmatic approach and to evaluate its performance in a practical setting. This is all the more needed since recent publications ignore the need for interval estimation. To illustrate and evaluate the method, Köhler et al. (1995) third molar scores are used to estimate the age in a dataset of 3200 male subjects in the juvenile age range.

U2 - 10.1007/s00414-015-1200-8

DO - 10.1007/s00414-015-1200-8

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 26024791

SN - 0937-9827

VL - 130

SP - 489

EP - 499

JO - International Journal of Legal Medicine

JF - International Journal of Legal Medicine

IS - 2

ER -