A review of the use of time‐varying covariates in the Fine‐Gray subdistribution hazard competing risk regression model
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In survival analysis, time-varying covariates are covariates whose value can change during follow-up. Outcomes in medical research are frequently subject to competing risks (events precluding the occurrence of the primary outcome). We review the types of time-varying covariates and highlight the effect of their inclusion in the subdistribution hazard model. External time-dependent covariates are external to the subject, can effect the failure process, but are not otherwise involved in the failure mechanism. Internal time-varying covariates are measured on the subject, can effect the failure process directly, and may also be impacted by the failure mechanism. In the absence of competing risks, a consequence of including internal time-dependent covariates in the Cox model is that one cannot estimate the survival function or the effect of covariates on the survival function. In the presence of competing risks, the inclusion of internal time-varying covariates in a subdistribution hazard model results in the loss of the ability to estimate the cumulative incidence function (CIF) or the effect of covariates on the CIF. Furthermore, the definition of the risk set for the subdistribution hazard function can make defining internal time-varying covariates difficult or impossible. We conducted a review of the use of time-varying covariates in subdistribution hazard models in articles published in the medical literature in 2015 and in the first 5 months of 2019. Seven percent of articles published included a time-varying covariate. Several inappropriately described a time-varying covariate as having an association with the risk of the outcome.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.012 | 0.043 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".