Talk:Confounding

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[edit] Ice Cream Murder

Are ice-creams and murder rates really a suitable example for comparison? --74.120.133.109 16:19, 13 August 2007 (UTC)


Confounding factor should redirect here.--BigaZon 17:02, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

This is silly. Why are you placing the term 'confounding' under a 'lurking variable' umbrella? It's a term on its own that needs expanding, there could be an article on socio-economic confounding which is a huge topic. I can't find anywhere in the discussion of socio-economic confounding where 'lurking variable' is mentioned. It's a facet of wikipedia. Confounding should have its own article. 152.78.123.52 23:53, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

No, Confounding factor deals with the statistical use of the term, interchangable with "lurking variable" or "confounding variable", not "socio-economic" confounding... see introductory texts like "The Practice of Statistics" and many others. Glad this now redirects properly. If you decide to make an article on some other type of confounding, you might want to make a disambiguation page. --BigaZon 00:31, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Old requested move

  • I think "confounding variable" or "confound" is more commonly used than "lurking variable". Is anyone opposed to a name change? --Jcbutler 20:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Me too - I was looking for information on this subject and I typed "confounding variable" Mrweetoes 21:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Since "Confounding variable" already exists as a redirect, it requires an administrator to move. I've listed it as a request for move. Whosasking 20:09, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
  • I've moved the page, per the request at WP:RM and consensus here. Cheers. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:05, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
  • I noticed calls for improvement to this article from medicine and probability. From a medicine standpoint it seems like it needs to mention the immense effect of confounding variables on medical care and public health policy, with links to the Women's Health Initiative, Social Darwinism, and Evidence Based Medicine. Does that sound about right? Flkevin 02:27, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

  • Confounding variable → Confounding — I recommend that this article be renamed as 'Confounding'. This should redirect from the 'Confounding variable' and 'Lurking variable' articles at least. This is standard terminology in Epidemiology (my own field) and in the quantitative sociology literature. Anyone know what economists call it? Astaines 23:18, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree. 'Confounding' can occur in the absence of a known variable.Davwillev (talk) 20:47, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I've moved the page, per the above discussion. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance. -GTBacchus(talk) 05:16, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Major edit

Hi, I've rewritten the section on managing confounding. It was confusing and not very relevant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Astaines (talk • contribs) 00:13, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you've removed many, many interesting things. And the current revision is actually more confusing. For example:
In a typical situation there are far more controls than cases. It is very useful to have a guide for selecting controls.
Uh, what "guide"? I love Wikipedia, but those other people that rob and delete content under the guise of "improvements" are a huge pain. How about contacting the author before doing large changes? I will reinstate the old version of that section.--Keimzelle (talk) 18:45, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Page still incorrect and more confusing than ever - read this instead

Do not use the Wikipedia page if you want to understand confounding. Some of what is written is correct, but the most critical definition is INCORRECT. I don't have time to fix the page, but here is a simple explanation of the concept of confounding.

A confounder (or confounding variable) is something that is correlated with the independent (causative) variable you are investigating, and causes or prevents the effect (dependent variable) you are investigating. Because it is associated with both of them, it will interfere with the ability of statistical tests to correctly indicate the impact of your causative variable; that is, the confounder will caused biased estimates of the impact of your causative variable.

Note that a true confounder is itself another causative/preventive variable. (Variables that are only correlated with the effect won't cause confounding.) For instance, drinking and smoking are correlated, people who do one tend to do the other. Today we know that tobacco worsens heart disease, but alcohol is protective against heart disease. Tobacco's effect is bigger than alcohol's, so together they cause net harm. Early studies of alcohol use and heart disease indicated that alcohol CAUSED heart disease because researchers had no data on smoking. Once both factors were included (along with other important variables), the truth was understood. In this example, tobacco use was the confounder for early studies investigating the influence of alcohol on heart disease.

I'm a health economist, and we call confounders that, or confounding variables. Never heard the term lurking variable except for Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Scientist99 (talk • contribs) 23:18, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The want to merge articles on 'lurking variable', 'counfounding variable' and 'counfounding' came about because of the bias toward pure mathematical knowledge where I believe the term 'Lurking variable' is used more than 'confounding variable' to describe a similar concept. Supposed (talk) 13:23, 22 January 2008 (UTC)