Propensity score matching for multilevel spatial data: accounting for geographic confounding in health disparity studies

Table 1 Balance of covariates between NHB and NHW veterans in pre-matched, patient-matched, and spatially-matched samples; “Stand. Diff.” denotes the absolute value of the standardized difference and “Service Percent \(\ge\) 50” indicates that the veteran’s rate of service connected disability was greater than 50\(\%\)

Variable	Pre-matched			Patient-matched			Spatial-matched
Variable	NHB	NHW	Stand. Diff.	NHB	NHW	Stand. Diff.	NHB	NHW	Stand. Diff.
Age	62.00	67.49	0.573	64.26	64.23	0.003	64.51	64.54	0.003
Female	7.43	2.67	0.219	3.63	4.15	0.038	3.56	4.52	0.069
Service Percent \(\ge 50\)	45.97	39.41	0.133	45.15	46.61	0.041	44.09	43.80	0.008
Married	52.83	65.79	0.266	56.25	62.72	0.187	56.54	62.86	0.183
Substance Abuse	11.04	4.46	0.248	6.92	6.63	0.016	6.89	6.37	0.030
Cerebrovascular Disease	3.58	3.24	0.019	3.70	3.57	0.010	3.91	3.19	0.055
Congestive Heart Failure	8.58	11.07	0.084	9.30	9.42	0.006	9.97	8.84	0.055
Cardiovascular Disease	8.46	15.64	0.222	9.96	10.03	0.003	11.00	9.95	0.048
Depression	35.94	31.55	0.093	34.78	35.46	0.020	34.37	33.84	0.016
Hypertension	88.41	84.44	0.116	87.62	87.03	0.025	87.25	86.43	0.034
Obesity	27.23	25.87	0.031	27.04	26.89	0.005	27.04	26.59	0.014
Psychoses	6.83	3.81	0.135	5.44	4.93	0.033	5.47	4.95	0.033
Homeless	0.91	0.18	0.099	0.75	0.25	0.100	0.70	0.25	0.093

ISSN: 1476-072X