TY - JOUR T1 - Uncertainty analysis: an example of its application to estimating a survey proportion JF - Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health JO - J Epidemiol Community Health SP - 650 LP - 654 DO - 10.1136/jech.2006.053660 VL - 61 IS - 7 AU - Anne M Jurek AU - George Maldonado AU - Sander Greenland AU - Timothy R Church Y1 - 2007/07/01 UR - http://jech.bmj.com/content/61/7/650.abstract N2 - Uncertainty analysis is a method, established in engineering and policy analysis but relatively new to epidemiology, for the quantitative assessment of biases in the results of epidemiological studies. Each uncertainty analysis is situation specific, but usually involves four main steps: (1) specify the target parameter of interest and an equation for its estimator; (2) specify the equation for random and bias effects on the estimator; (3) specify prior probability distributions for the bias parameters; and (4) use Monte-Carlo or analytic techniques to propagate the uncertainty about the bias parameters through the equation, to obtain an approximate posterior probability distribution for the parameter of interest. A basic example is presented illustrating uncertainty analyses for four proportions estimated from a survey of the epidemiological literature. ER -