Turning the information-sharing dial: efficient inference from different data sources

Abstract

A fundamental aspect of statistics is the integration of data from different sources. Classically, Fisher and others were focused on how to integrate homogeneous (or only mildly heterogeneous) sets of data. More recently, as data are becoming more accessible, the question of if data sets from different sources should be integrated is becoming more relevant. The current literature treats this as a question with only two answers: integrate or don't. Here we take a different approach, motivated by information-sharing principles coming from the shrinkage estimation literature. In particular, we deviate from the do/don't perspective and propose a dial parameter that controls the extent to which two data sources are integrated. How far this dial parameter should be turned is shown to depend, for example, on the informativeness of the different data sources as measured by Fisher information. In the context of generalized linear models, this more nuanced data integration framework leads to relatively simple parameter estimates and valid tests/confidence intervals. Moreover, we demonstrate both theoretically and empirically that setting the dial parameter according to our recommendation leads to more efficient estimation compared to other binary data integration schemes.