A Comparison of Three Popular Methods for Handling Missing Data: Complete-Case Analysis, Inverse Probability Weighting, and Multiple Imputation

• Published in: Sociological methods & research Vol. 53; no. 3; pp. 1105 - 1135
• Main Authors: Little, Roderick J., Carpenter, James R., Lee, Katherine J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01-08-2024; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Analysis; Missing data; Multiple imputation; Probability; Strength; Variables; Weighting; imputation; weighting; incomplete data; missing data
• ISSN: 0049-1241; 1552-8294
• DOI: 10.1177/00491241221113873

Missing data are a pervasive problem in data analysis. Three common methods for addressing the problem are (a) complete-case analysis, where only units that are complete on the variables in an analysis are included; (b) weighting, where the complete cases are weighted by the inverse of an estimate of the probability of being complete; and (c) multiple imputation (MI), where missing values of the variables in the analysis are imputed as draws from their predictive distribution under an implicit or explicit statistical model, the imputation process is repeated to create multiple filled-in data sets, and analysis is carried out using simple MI combining rules. This article provides a non-technical discussion of the strengths and weakness of these approaches, and when each of the methods might be adopted over the others. The methods are illustrated on data from the Youth Cohort (Time) Series (YCS) for England, Wales and Scotland, 1984–2002.