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The individualistic fallacy, ecological studies and instrumental variables: a causal interpretation

机译：个人主义谬误，生态研究和工具变量：因果关系解释

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The validity of ecological studies in epidemiology for inferring causal relationships has been widely challenged as observed associations could be biased by the Ecological Fallacy. We reconsider the important design components of ecological studies, and discuss the conditions that may lead to spurious associations. Ecological associations are useful and valid when the ecological exposures can be interpreted as Instrumental Variables. A suitable example may be a time series analysis of environmental pollution (e.g. particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of <10 micrometres; PM10) and health outcomes (e.g. hospital admissions for acute myocardial infarction) as environmental pollution levels are a cause of individual exposure levels and not just an aggregate measurement. Ecological exposures may also be employed in situations (perhaps rare) where individual exposures are known but their associations with health outcomes are confounded by unknown or unquantifiable factors. Ecological associations have a notorious reputation in epidemiology and individualistic associations are considered superior to ecological associations because of the “ecological fallacy”. We have argued that this is incorrect in situations in which ecological or aggregate exposures can serve as an instrumental variable and associations between individual exposure and outcome are likely to be confounded by unmeasured variables.
机译：在流行病学中推断因果关系的生态学研究的有效性受到了广泛的挑战，因为观察到的关联可能会因生态学谬误而产生偏差。我们重新考虑了生态学研究的重要设计要素，并讨论了可能导致虚假关联的条件。当生态暴露可以解释为工具变量时，生态关联是有用且有效的。一个合适的例子可能是对环境污染（例如，空气动力学直径小于10微米的颗粒物; PM10）和健康结果（例如，急性心肌梗塞的住院）的时间序列分析，因为环境污染水平是个人暴露水平的原因而不只是总的测量生态暴露也可用于已知个体暴露但其与健康结果的关联因未知或无法量化的因素而混淆的情况（也许很少见）。生态协会在流行病学方面享有盛誉，由于“生态谬误”，个人主义协会被认为优于生态协会。我们认为，在以下情况下这是不正确的，在这种情况下，生态或总体暴露量可以作为工具变量，而个人暴露量和结果之间的关联可能会被无法衡量的变量所混淆。

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