摘要:Although formal hypothesis tests provide a convenient framework for displaying the statistical results of empirical comparisons, standard tests should not be used without consideration of underlying measurement error structure. As part of the validation process, predictions of individual blood lead concentrations from models with site-specific input parameters are often compared with blood lead concentrations measured in field studies that also report lead concentrations in environmental media (soil, dust, water, paint) as surrogates for exposure. Measurements of these environmental media are subject to several sources of variability, including temporal and spatial sampling, sample preparation and chemical analysis, and data entry or recording. Adjustments for measurement error must be made before statistical tests can be used to empirically compare environmental data with model predictions. This report illustrates the effect of measurement error correction using a real dataset of child blood lead concentrations for an undisclosed midwestern community. We illustrate both the apparent failure of some standard regression tests and the success of adjustment of such tests for measurement error using the SIMEX (simulation-extrapolation) procedure. This procedure adds simulated measurement error to model predictions and then subtracts the total measurement error, analogous to the method of standard additions used by analytical chemists. Full text Full text is available as a scanned copy of the original print version. Get a printable copy (PDF file) of the complete article (2.0M), or click on a page image below to browse page by page. Links to PubMed are also available for Selected References . 1541 1542 1543 1544 1545 1546 1547 1548 1549 1550