Imputation of missing ages in pedigree data

Abstract

Background: In human pedigree data age at disease occurrence frequently is missing and is imputed using various methods. However, little is known about the performance of these methods when applied to families. In particular, there is little information about the level of agreement between imputed and actual values of temporal data and their effects on inferences. Methods: We performed two evaluations of five imputation methods used to generate complete data for repositories to be shared by many investigators. Two of the methods are mean substitution methods, two are regression methods and one is a multiple imputation method based on one of the regression methods. To evaluate the methods, we..