Estimation of attributable fractions using inverse probability weighting.

The attributable fraction is commonly used in epidemiology to quantify the impact of an exposure on a disease. Several estimation methods have been suggested in the literature, including maximum likelihood estimation. In this article we propose an additional estimation method, based on inverse probability weighting. This method is particularly useful when a model for the exposure distibution can be well specified. We carry out a simulation study to examine the performance of the inverse probability weighted estimator, and to compare it to the maximum likelihood estimator.