Incorporating covariates in constructing informative prior to reduce prior-data conflict

What is it about?

Constructing an informative prior based on available data for a parameter of interest for the current study is an essential part of leveraging external data to accelerate clinical evaluation of a medical product. We introduce a modification of the method of power prior via propensity score weighting that can mitigate the issue of prior-data conflict due to covariate imbalance. The proposed modification is simpler to implement than the stratification-based approach. A simulation study was conducted, which demonstrates excellent operating characteristics for the proposed statistical procedure.

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Why is it important?

The enhanced operating characteristics and the simplicity of the proposed method facilitate its application in practice.