STATISTICS COLLOQUIUM
Melanie M. Wall
Professor of Biostatistics (in Psychiatry)
Columbia University
In search of an optimally valid criteria set for diagnosing alcohol use disorder
ABSTRACT
In the field of psychiatry, the current classification system is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5). The DSM-5 provides diagnostic criteria that are associated with each mental disorder. Following the prototypal theory, not all listed criteria for a specific disorder must be present in order to receive a diagnosis but rather a specified subset of criteria must be present. To be diagnosed with an alcohol use disorder (AUD) under the DSM-5, an individual meeting any two of the 11 criteria receives a diagnosis. The question we will address is whether the validity of the diagnosis using the rule of 2 out of 11 can be improved upon using some other rule based on the same or a subset of the 11 criteria. In this presentation we will: 1) define validity in the absence of a gold standard by formalizing ideas of content validity from psychometrics 2) compare different measures of diagnostic performance, e.g. sensitivity, specificity, misclassification rate, diagnostic odds ratio from biostatistics and 3) demonstrate an empirical search algorithm incorporating uncertainty through bootstrapping that can identify an optimally valid rule for diagnosing alcohol use disorder. The data we will use comes from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in 2001/2002.
DATE: Wednesday, November 18, 2015
TIME: 4:00 p.m. -5:00 p.m.
PLACE: Philip E. Austin Bldg., Rm. 105
Coffee will be served at 3:30 p.m. in the Noether Lounge (AUST 326)
For more information, contact: Tracy Burke at tracy.burke@uconn.edu