openpharma / openpharma/rbmi

Add option to use original Rubin (1987) degrees-of-freedom pooling

Open
#587 8 comments 1 reaction 1 assignee View on GitHub

@danielinteractive is already working on this.

Since Sep 11, 2026.

enhancement
Dominant language
R
Stars
21
Forks
12
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

Feature Request

Currently, the rbmi package uses the Barnard-Rubin (1999) method for pooling degrees of freedom when combining results from multiple imputations (see rbmi:::rubin_df()). This is an appropriate default and is statistically preferable in many situations, particularly for small samples.

However, it would be useful to provide an option to use the original Rubin (1987) degrees-of-freedom method as an alternative.

The Barnard-Rubin adjustment should remain the default, with the original Rubin method available as an explicit user-selectable option.

Motivation

Some legacy analyses (e.g., SAS PROC MIANALYZE without the EDF option) use the original Rubin pooling approach. Supporting this method in rbmi would allow users to:

  1. Reproduce historical analyses and validate R results against legacy SAS outputs.
  2. Facilitate migration from SAS to R while maintaining consistency with previously generated study outputs.
  3. Compare results obtained using the original Rubin and Barnard-Rubin methods when required.
Details
Image

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.