Irena Cenzer, PhD (UCSF Pepper Center Senior Statistician), John Boscardin, PhD (UCSF Pepper Center DAC Co-Director), Ashwin Kotwal, MD, MS and Matthew Miller, DPT, PhD (UCSF Pepper Center Scholar Alumni) published a paper entitled "Comparison of health and retirement study participants with and without linkage to Medicare claims" in JAGS.
The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) is a longitudinal, nationally representative study of older adults that has been collecting data since 1992. In any HRS wave, approximately 80%–90% of HRS participants consent to have their HRS survey linked to their Medicare claims. Given this high consent rate, adjustments for non-consent to Medicare linkage are not typical among claims-based analyses because there is an assumption of similarity with those who consent. However, systematic differences between participants who consent and those who do not could introduce bias. Understanding these differences could provide insights for possible adjustments of statistical analyses. Therefore, this paper aimed to examine the differences between HRS participants with and without a Medicare data linkage.