S3E1: Are we measuring what we think we’re measuring?

In the season three premiere Matt and Hailey discuss Chapter 13 in Modern Epidemiology, 4th edition. For the third season of the SERious Epi podcast, we are going to continue our close-reading of the newest version of the Modern Epi textbook. This chapter is focused on measurement error and misclassification. In this episode we discuss issues related to the mis-measurement of exposure, outcome, and covariates. We also debate whether misclassification is just an analytic issue (i.e., putting people into the wrong categories) or an analytic + conceptual issue (i.e., putting people into the wrong categories and having an incorrect definition for those categories). We also talk about measurement error DAGs, why we wish more people use analytic approaches to correct for measurement error, and Matt explains the concept of email bankruptcy.