Roderick Little | Survey Research Center

Research Professor, Survey Research Center, Richard D Remington Collegiate Professor of Biostatistics, Professor of Biostatistics, Dept of Biostatistics, SPH, Professor of Statistics, LSA

Photo of Roderick Little

Biography

Rod Little chaired the Biostatistics Department from January 2007 to December 2009, and from 1993 to 2001. Prior to that he was Professor in the Department of Biomathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles; Research Fellow at the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1982-83); Expert Consultant at the United States Environmental Protection Agency; Scientific Associate at the World Fertility Survey; and Research Associate (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Statistics, University of Chicago.

Active editorially, he was Coordinating and Applications Editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association from 1992-1994, and he is currently co-editor of the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology. From Jan 2010-Dec 2012 Little was a Vice President of the American Statistical Association.

Since his fellowship at the Census Bureau he has been interested in federal statistical issues such as the census undercount, and he has served as a member of the Committee on National Statistics and a number of other National Research Council committees. In 2009-10 he chaired an NRC study on the prevention and treatment of missing data in clinical trials. From Sep 2010-Jan 2013 Little served as the inaugural Associate Director for Research and Methodology and Chief Scientist at the U.S. Census Bureau.

An ISI highly cited researcher, he has over 200 refereed publications, notably on methods for the analysis of data with missing values and model-based survey inference, and the application of statistics to diverse scientific areas, including medicine, demography, economics, psychiatry, aging and the environment. He has chaired or co-chaired 29 doctoral committees. In 2005 Dr. Little received the Wilks’ Memorial Award from the American Statistical Association for his research contributions. At the Joint Statistical Meetings, he gave the President’s Invited Address in 2005 and the COPSS Fisher lecture in 2012.

Little is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Projects

Indices of Selection Bias for Non-Probability Samples

Funded Research

Indices of Selection Bias for Non-Probability Samples

Publications

Franco, Carolina; Little, Roderick J. A.; Louis, Thomas A.; Slud, Eric V. (2019). Comparative Study of Confidence Intervals for Proportions in Complex Sample Surveys. Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology.
Murdock, B. J.; Zhou, T.; Kashlan, S. R.; Little, Roderick J. A.; Goutman, S. A.; Feldman, E. L. (2017). Correlation of peripheral immunity with rapid amyotrophic lateral sclerosis progression. JAMA Neurology, 74(12), 1446-1454.
Lewandowski-Romps, Lisa; Schroeder, Heather M.; Berglund, Patricia A.; Colpe, Lisa J.; Cox, Kenneth; Hauret, Keith; Hay, Jeffrey D.; Jones, Bruce; Little, Roderick J. A.; Mitchell, Colter M.; Schoenbaum, Michael; Schulz, Paul; Stein, Murray B.; Ursano, Robert J.; Heeringa, Steven G. (2017). Medical-encounter mental health diagnoses, non-fatal injury and polypharmacy indicators of risk for accident death in the US Army enlisted soldiers, 2004-2009. Preventive medicine, 111, 299-306.
Little, Roderick J. A.; Rubin, Donald B.; Zangeneh, Sahar Z. (2017). Conditions for Ignoring the Missing-Data Mechanism in Likelihood Inferences for Parameter Subsets. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 112(517), 314-320.
Benjamin, Daniel J.; Berger, James O.; Johannesson, Magnus; Nosek, Brian A.; Wagenmakers, E.-J.; Berk, Richard; Bollen, Kenneth A.; Brembs, Bjorn; Brown, Lawrence; Camerer, Colin; Cesarini, David; Chambers, Christopher D.; Clyde, Merlise; Cook, Thomas D.; Boeck, Paul De; Dienes, Zoltan; Dreber, Anna; Easwaran, Kenny; Efferson, Charles; Fehr, Ernst; Fidler, Fiona; Field, Andy P.; Forster, Malcolm; George, Edward I.; Gonzalez, Richard; Goodman, Steven; Green, Edwin; Green, Donald P.; Greenwald, Anthony G.; Hadfield, Jarrod D.; Hedges, Larry V.; Held, Leonhard; Ho, Teck Hua; Hoijtink, Herbert; Hruschka, Daniel J.; Imai, Kosuke; Imbens, Guido; Ioannidis, John P. A.; Jeon, Minjeong; Jones, James Holland; Kirchler, Michael; Laibson, David; List, John; Little, Roderick J. A.; Lupia, Arthur; Machery, Edouard; Maxwell, Scott E.; McCarthy, Michael; Moore, Don A.; Morgan, Stephen L.; Munafó, Marcus; Nakagawa, Shinichi; Nyhan, Brendan; Parker, Timothy H.; Pericchi, Luis; Perugini, Marco; Rouder, Jeff; Rousseau, Judith; Savalei, Victoria; Schönbrodt, Felix D.; Sellke, Thomas; Sinclair, Betsy; Tingley, Dustin; Zandt, Trisha Van; Vazire, Simine; Watts, Duncan J.; Winship, Christopher; Wolpert, Robert L.; Xie, Yu; Young, Cristobal; Zinman, Jonathan; Johnson, Valen E. (2017). Redefine statistical significance. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, 6-10.
Walicke, Patricia; Abosch, Aviva; Asher, Anthony; F, II Barker; Ghogawala, Zoher; Harbaugh, Robert; Jehi, Lara; Kestle, John; Koroshetz, Walter; Little, Roderick J. A.; Rubin, Donald; Valadka, Alex; Wisniewski, Stephen; Chiocca, E. A. (2017). Launching Effectiveness Research to Guide Practice in Neurosurgery: A National Institute Neurological Disorders and Stroke Workshop Report. Neurosurgery, 80(4), 505-514.
Chen, Qixuan; Elliott, Michael R.; Haziza, David; Yang, Ye; Ghosh, Malay; Little, Roderick J. A.; Sedransk, Joseph; Thompson, Mary (2017). Approaches to Improving Survey-Weighted Estimates. Statistical Science, 32(2), 227-248.
Thomas, Neal; Harel, Ofer; Little, Roderick J. A. (2016). Analyzing clinical trial outcomes based on incomplete daily diary reports. Statistics in medicine, 35(17), 2894-2906.
Little, Roderick J. A. (2016). Missing Data/Imputation. 915-919. In Whitbourne, Susan K. (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Adulthood and Aging. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.:Chichester, West Sussex, UK.
Little, Roderick J. A.; Wang, Julia; Sun, Xiang; Tian, Hong; Suh, Eun-Young; Lee, Michael; Sarich, Troy; Oppenheimer, Leonard; Plotnikov, Alexei; Wittes, Janet; Cook-Bruns, Nancy; Burton, Paul; Gibson, C. Michael; Mohanty, Surya (2016). The treatment of missing data in a large cardiovascular clinical outcomes study. Clinical Trials, 13(3), 344-351.
Kang, Shan; Little, Roderick J. A. and Kaciroti, Niko (2015). Missing Not at Random Models for Masked Clinical Trials with Dropouts. Clinical Trials, 12(2), 139-148.
Little, Roderick J. A. (2015). Calibrated Bayes, an Inferential Paradigm for Official Statistics in the Era of Big Data. Statistical Journal of the IAOS, 31(4), 555-563.
Zangeneh, Sahar Z. and Little, Roderick J. A. (2015). Bayesian Inference for the Finite Population Total from a Heteroscedastic Probability Proportional to Size Sample. Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, 3(2), 162-192.
Zhang, Nanhua and Little, Roderick J. A. (2015). Subsample Ignorable Likelihood for Accelerated Failure Time Models with Missing Predictors. Lifetime Data Analysis, 21(3), 457-469.
Little, Roderick J. A. and Kang, Shan (2015). Intention-to-Treat Analysis with Treatment Discontinuation and Missing Data in Clinical Trials. Statistics in Medicine, 34(16), 2381-2390.
Street, A. E.; Gilman, S. E.; Rosellini, A. J.; Stein, M. B.; Bromet, E. J.; Cox, K. L.; Colpe, L. J.; Fullerton, C. S.; Gruber, M. J.; Heeringa, Steven G.; Lewandowski-Romps, L.; Little, Roderick J. A.; Naifeh, J. A.; Nock, M. K.; Sampson, N. A.; Schoenbaum, M.; Ursano, R. J.; Zaslavsky, A. M.; Kessler, R. C. and Army STARRS collaborators (2015). Understanding the Elevated Suicide Risk of Female Soldiers during Deployments. Psychological Medicine, 45(4), 717-726.
Elliott, Michael R. and Little, Roderick J. A. (2015). Discussion of “on Bayesian Estimation of Marginal Structural Models”. Biometrics, 71(2), 288-291.
Yang, Ye and Little, Roderick J. A. (2014). A Comparison of Doubly Robust Estimators of the Mean with Missing Data. Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, 85(16), 3383-3403.
Joyce, Patrick M.; Malec, Donald; Little, Roderick J. A.; Gilary, Aaron; Navarro, Alfredo and Asiala, Mark E. (2014). Statistical Modeling Methodology for the Voting Rights Act Section 203 Language Assistance Determinations. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 109(505), 36-47.
Li, T.; Hutfless, S.; Scharfstein, D. O.; Daniels, M. J.; Hogan, J. W.; Little, Roderick J. A.; Roy, J. A.; Law, A. H. and Dickersin, K. (2014). Standards should be Applied in the Prevention and Handling of Missing Data for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research: A Systematic Review and Expert Consensus. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 67(1), 15-32.
Guo, Ying and Little, Roderick J. A. (2013). Bayesian Multiple Imputation for Assay Data Subject to Measurement Error. Journal of Statistical Theory and Practice, 7(2), 219-232.
West, Brady T. and Little, Roderick J. A. (2013). Non-Response Adjustment of Survey Estimates Based on Auxiliary Variables Subject to Error. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C: Applied Statistics, 62(2), 213-231.
Little, Roderick J. A. (2013). In Praise of Simplicity Not Mathematistry! Ten Simple Powerful Ideas for the Statistical Scientist. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 108(502), 359-369.
Little, Roderick J. A. (2012). Calibrated Bayes, an Alternative Inferential Paradigm for Official Statistics. Journal of Official Statistics, 28(3), 309-334.
Sinsheimer, Janet S.; Little, Roderick J. A. and Lake, James A. (2012). Rooting Gene Trees without Outgroups: EP Rooting. Genome Biology and Evolution, 4(8), 709-719.
Zhang, Nanhua and Little, Roderick J. A. (2012). A Pseudo-Bayesian Shrinkage Approach to Regression with Missing Covariates. Biometrics, 68(3), 933-942.
Chen, Qixuan; Elliott, Michael R. and Little, Roderick J. A. (2012). Bayesian Inference for Finite Population Quantiles from Unequal Probability Samples. Survey Methodology, 38(2), 203-214.
Little, Roderick J. A.; Cohen, M. L.; Dickersin, K.; Emerson, S. S.; Farrar, J. T.; Neaton, J. D.; Little, Roderick J. A.; Siegel, J. P. and Stern, H. (2012). The Design and Conduct of Clinical Trials to Limit Missing Data. Statistics in Medicine, 31(28), 3433-3343.
Little, Roderick J. A.; D'Agostino, Ralph; Cohen, Michael L.; Dickersin, Kay; Emerson, Scott S.; Farrar, John T.; Frangakis, Constantine; Hogan, Joseph W.; Molenberghs, Geert; Murphy, Susan A.; Neaton, James D.; Rotnitzky, Andrea; Scharfstein, Daniel; Shih, Weichung J.; Siegel, Jay P. and Stern, Hal (2012). The Prevention and Treatment of Missing Data in Clinical Trials. New England Journal of Medicine, 367(14), 1355-1360.
Guo, Y.; Little, Roderick J. A. and McConnell, D. S. (2012). On using Summary Statistics from an External Calibration Sample to Correct for Covariate Measurement Error. Epidemiology, 23(1), 165-174.
Guo, Ying and Little, Roderick J. A. (2011). Regression Analysis with Covariates that have Heteroscedastic Measurement Error. Statistics in Medicine, 30(18), 2278-2294.
Andridge, Rebecca R. and Little, Roderick J. A. (2011). Proxy Pattern-Mixture Analysis for Survey Nonresponse. Journal of Official Statistics, 27(2), 153-180.
Zhang, Guangyu and Little, Roderick J. A. (2011). A Comparative Study of Doubly Robust Estimators of the Mean with Missing Data. Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, 81(12), 2039-2058.
Giusti, Caterina and Little, Roderick J. A. (2011). An Analysis of Nonignorable Nonresponse to Income in a Survey with a Rotating Panel Design. 27(2), 211-229.
Ismail, Amid I.; Ondersma, Steven; Willem Jedele, Jenefer M.; Little, Roderick J. A. and Lepkowski, James M. (2011). Evaluation of a Brief Tailored Motivational Intervention to Prevent Early Childhood Caries. Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, 39(5), 433-448.
Li, Y.; Taylor, Jeremy M. G. and Little, Roderick J. A. (2011). A Shrinkage Approach for Estimating a Treatment Effect using Intermediate Biomarker Data in Clinical Trials. Biometrics, 67(4), 1434-1441.
Little, Roderick J. A. (2011). Calibrated Bayes, for Statistics in General, and Missing Data in Particular. Statistical Science, 26(2), 162-174.
Little, Roderick J. A. and Zhang, N. (2011). Subsample Ignorable Likelihood for Regression Analysis with Missing Data. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C: Applied Statistics, 60(4), 591-605.
Little, Roderick J. A.; Yosef, M.; Nan, B. and Harlow, S. D. (2011). A Method for Longitudinal Prospective Evaluation of Markers for a Subsequent Event. American Journal of Epidemiology, 173(12), 1380-1387.
Cain, Kevin C.; Harlow, Sioban D.; Little, Roderick J. A.; Nan, Bin; Yosef, Matheos; Taffe, John R. and Elliott, Michael R. (2011). Bias due to Left Truncation and Left Censoring in Longitudinal Studies of Developmental and Disease Processes. American Journal of Epidemiology, 173(9), 1078-1084.
Andridge, Rebecca R. and Little, Roderick J. A. (2010). A Review of Hot Deck Imputation for Survey Non-Response. International Statistical Review, 78(1), 40-64.
Clark, Noreen M.; Shah, Smita; Dodge, Julia A.; Thomas, Lara J.; Andridge, Rebecca R. and Little, Roderick J. A. (2010). An Evaluation of Asthma Interventions for Preteen Students.(Report). Journal of School Health, 80(2), 80-87.
An, Hyonggin; Little, Roderick J. A. and Bozoki, Andrea (2010). A Statistical Algorithm for Detecting Cognitive Plateaus in Alzheimer’s Disease. Journal of Applied Statistics, 37(5), 779-789.
Zhang, Xiaoxi; Johnson, Timothy D.; Little, Roderick J. A. and Cao, Yue (2010). Longitudinal Image Analysis of tumour/healthy Brain Change in Contrast Uptake Induced by Radiation. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C: Applied Statistics, 59(5), 821-838.
Zhang, X.; Johnson, T. D.; Little, Roderick J. A. and Cao, Y. (2010). A Bayesian Image Analysis of Radiation Induced Changes in Tumor Vascular Permeability. Bayesian Analysis, 5(1), 189-212.
Guo, Y.; Harel, O. and Little, Roderick J. A. (2010). How Well Quantified is the Limit of Quantification?. Epidemiology, 21(SUPPL. 4), S10-S16.
Chen, Qixuan; Garabrant, David H.; Hedgeman, Elizabeth; Little, Roderick J. A.; Elliott, Michael R.; Gillespie, Brenda; Hong, Biling; Lee, Shih-Yuan; Lepkowski, James M.; Franzblau, Alfred; Adriaens, Peter; Demond, Avery H. and Patterson, Donald G. J. (2010). Estimation of Background Serum 2,3,7,8-TCDD Concentrations by using Quantile Regression in the UMDES and NHANES Populations. Epidemiology, 21(4 Supplement), S51-S57.
Long, Qi; Little, Roderick J. A. and Lin, Xihong (2010). Estimating Causal Effects in Trials Involving Multitreatment Arms Subject to Non-Compliance: A Bayesian Framework. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C: Applied Statistics, 59(3), 513-531.
Chen, Q.; Elliott, Michael R. and Little, Roderick J. A. (2010). Bayesian Penalized Spline Model-Based Inference for Finite Population Proportion in Unequal Probability Sampling. Survey Methodology, 36(1), 23-34.
Couper, Mick P.; Alexander, G. L.; Zhang, N.; Little, Roderick J. A.; Maddy, N.; Nowak, M. A.; McClure, J. B.; Calvi, J. J.; Rolnick, S. J.; Stopponi, M. A. and Johnson, C. C. (2010). Engagement and Retention: Measuring Breadth and Depth of Participant use of an Online Intervention. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 12(4), e52p.1-e52p.15.
Resnicow, K.; Strecher, Victor; Couper, Mick P.; Chua, Hannah; Little, Roderick J. A.; Nair, Vijay; Polk, Thad A. and Atienza, Audie A. (2010). Methodological and Design Issues in Patient-Centered e-Health Research. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 38(1), 98-102.
An, D.; Little, Roderick J. A. and McNally, J. W. (2010). A Multiple Imputation Approach to Disclosure Limitation for High-Age Individuals in Longitudinal Studies. Statistics in Medicine, 29(17), 1769-1778.
Schisterman, E. F. and Little, Roderick J. A. (2010). Opening the Black Box of Biomarker Measurement Error. Epidemiology, 21(SUPPL. 4), S1-S3.
Zhou, Y.; Little, Roderick J. A. and Kalbfleisch, J. D. (2010). Block-Conditional Missing at Random Models for Missing Data. Statistical Science, 25(4), 517-532.
Little, Roderick J. A. (2010). Discussion of Articles on the Design of the National Children’s Study. Statistics in Medicine, 29(13), 1388-1390.
Little, Roderick J. A. and Zhang, Guangyu (2009). Robust Likelihood-Based Analysis of Longitudinal Data with Missing Values. (18), 317. In Lynn,Peter (Ed.), Methodology of Longitudinal Surveys. John Wiley & Sons:Chichester, UK.
Bozoki, Andrea C.; An, Hyonggin; Bozoki, Eva S. and Little, Roderick J. A. (2009). The Existence of Cognitive Plateaus in Alzheimer’s Disease. Alzheimer's & Dementia, 5(6), 470-478.
Little, Roderick J. A.; Long, Qi and Lin, Xihong (2009). A Comparison of Methods for Estimating the Causal Effect of a Treatment in Randomized Clinical Trials Subject to Noncompliance. Biometrics, 65(2), 640-649.
Little, Roderick J. A. (2009). Comments on: Missing Data Methods in Longitudinal Studies: A Review. Test, 18(1), 47-50.
Yuan, Ying and Little, Roderick J. A. (2009). Mixed-Effect Hybrid Models for Longitudinal Data with Nonignorable Dropout. Biometrics, 65(2), 478-486.
Yuan, Ying and Little, Roderick J. A. (2009). Meta-Analysis of Studies with Missing Data. Biometrics, 65(2), 487-496.
Little, Roderick J. A. (2009). Selection and Pattern-Mixture Models. (18), 409. In Fitzmaurice,Garrett M.; Davidian,M.; Verbeke,G. and Molenbergs,G. (Ed.), Longitudinal Data Analysis. CRC Press:Boca Raton.
Andridge, R. H. and Little, Roderick J. A. (2009). The use of Sample Weights in Hot Deck Imputation. Journal of Official Statistics, 25(1), 21-36.
Zhang, Guangyu and Little, Roderick J. A. (2009). Extensions of the Penalized Spline of Propensity Prediction Method of Imputation. Biometrics, 65(3), 911-918.
An, Hyonggin and Little, Roderick J. A. (2008). Robust Model-Based Inference for Incomplete Data Via Penalized Spline Propensity Prediction. Communications in Statistics - Simulation and Computation, 37(9), 1718-1731.
Harlow, Sioban D.; Mitchell, Ellen S.; Crawford, Sybil; Nan, Bin; Little, Roderick J. A. and Taffe, John (2008). The ReSTAGE Collaboration: Defining Optimal Bleeding Criteria for Onset of Early Menopausal Transition. Fertility and Sterility, 89(1), 129-140.
Clark, Noreen M.; Janz, Nancy K.; Dodge, Julia A.; Mosca, Lori; Lin, Xihong; Long, Qi; Little, Roderick J. A.; Wheeler, John R. C.; Keteyian, Steven and Liang, Jersey (2008). The Effect of Patient Choice of Intervention on Health Outcomes. Contemporary Clinical Trials, 29(5), 679-686.
Little, Roderick J. A.; Long, Q. and Lin, X. (2008). Comment on “can Nonrandomized Experiments Yield Accurate Answers? A Randomized Experiment Comparing Random and Nonrandom Assignments”. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 103(484), 1344-1346.
Little, Roderick J. A.; Yosef, Matheos; Cain, Kevin C.; Nan, Bin and Harlow, Siobán D. (2008). A Hot-Deck Multiple Imputation Procedure for Gaps in Longitudinal Data on Recurrent Events. Statistics in Medicine, 27(1), 103-120.
Strecher, V. J.; Mcclure, J.; Alexander, G.; Chakraborty, B.; Nair, V.; Konkel, J.; Greene, S. M.; Couper, Mick P. and Little, Roderick J. A. (2008). The Role of Engagement in a Tailored Web-Based Smoking Cessation Program: Results of a Randomized Trial. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 10(5), e36.
Strecher, Victor J.; Mcclure, Jennifer B.; Alexander, Gwen L.; Chakraborty, Bibhas; Nair, Vijay N.; Konkel, Janine M.; Greene, Sarah M.; Collins, Linda M.; Carlier, Carola C.; Wiese, Cheryl J.; Little, Roderick J. A.; Pomerleau, Cynthia S. and Pomerleau, Ovide F. (2008). Web-Based Smoking-Cessation Programs. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 34(5), 373-381.
Long, Qi; Little, Roderick J. A. and Lin, Xihong (2008). Causal Inference in Hybrid Intervention Trials Involving Treatment Choice. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 103(482), 474-484.
Bell, Robert M.; Cohen, Michael L. and Little, Roderick J. A. (2008). Research and Plans for Coverage Measurement in the 2010 Census. Washington, D.C:National Academies Press.
Nair, Vijay; Strecher, Victor; Fagerlin, Angela; Ubel, Peter; Resnicow, K.; Murphy, Susan A.; Little, Roderick J. A.; Chakraborty, Bibhas and Zhang, Aijun (2008). Screening Experiments and the use of Fractional Factorial Designs in Behavioral Intervention Research. American Journal of Public Health, 98(8), 1354-1359.
Yuan, Ying and Little, Roderick J. A. (2008). Model-Based Estimates of the Finite Population Mean for Two-Stage Cluster Samples with Item Nonresponse. Journal of Official Statistics, 24(2), 193-211.
Zhang, X.; Johnson, T. D.; Little, Roderick J. A. and Cao, Y. (2008). Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Image Analysis Via the EM Algorithm with Stochastic Variation. Annals of Applied Statistics, 2(2), 736-755.