“Conditional” regression – what do we mean?
(a) Have levels of strata (age category) or centers (hospitals) or pairs (matched)
(b) Wish to estimate association of a within-strata exposure (drug exposure) and outcome
(c) Have different intercept for each stratum, but these levels are “nuisance” parameters –
we do not care about them, and we cannot estimate them using this method. They are
“conditioned out” of the analysis
(d) We want to condition these out in order to address the problem of heterogeneity in the
baseline risk (the risk of outcome in the reference group of patients)