Current research interests
- Cognitive modelling in the presence of missing data
- Healthy active life expectancy
- Multistate modelling
- Individual trajectories throughout life from evidence synthesis
- Applied research areas: ageing, cognition, disability, neuropathology, autism
A statistician by training, I have worked in the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit in Cambridge since 1997, initially as the study statistician for the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognitive Function and Ageing Study (CFAS). I now am the principal statistician for that study, but also a programme leader within the Biostatistics Unit on statistical aspects of ageing epidemiology. I am also a fellow and an elected council member of the Royal Statistical Society. My research programme covers the statistical investigation of healthy ageing, mild cognitive impairment, cognitive decline and dementia with special emphasis on missing data analysis and the use of Markov Chain modelling.
MRC CFAS is a large-scale multi-centre longitudinal epidemiological study of ageing, with over 13,000 individuals age 65 and above followed over fourteen years and has over 35,000 interviews from these individuals. The cohort is a rich resource of longitudinal data with the additional analytical complications of missing data. The study can address many questions on the health of the old age population, but raises many methodological statistical questions.
My research programme aims are to contribute directly to estimates of various aspects of the health of the ageing population using statistical methods that not only investigate mortality and morbidity, but are rigorous and unbiased in the presence of missing data. |
van den Hout A, Jagger C, Matthews FE. Estimating life expectancy in health and ill health using a hidden Markov model (In press, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society - Series C)
Wright CF, Hall A, Matthews FE & Brayne C. Biomarkers, Dementia and Public Health. (In Press, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences)
Baron-Cohen S, Scott FJ, Allison C, Williams J, Bolton P, Matthews FE, Brayne C. (2009) Estimating autism spectrum prevalence in the population: a school based study from the UK. American Journal of Psychiatry; 194: 500-9.
Llewellyn DJ, Lang IA, Langa KM, Matthews FE. (2009) Second-hand smoke exposure and cognitive impairment in non-smokers: evidence from a population-based cohort. BMJ; 338: b462
Matthews FE, Jagger C, Miller LL, Brayne C, MRC CFAS. (2009) Education differences in life expectancy with cognitive impairment. Journals of Gerontology: Medical Sciences; 64(1):125-31
Ngondi J, Matthews FE, Reacher M, Baba S, Brayne C, Emerson P. (2009) What will happen if we do nothing to control trachoma: health expectancies for blinding trachoma in southern Sudan. PLoS Journal of neglected diseases; 3(3): e396
van den Hout A, Matthews FE. (2009) A piecewise-constant Markov model and the effects of study design on the estimation of life expectancies in health and ill health. Statistical Methods in Medical Research; 18: 145-162
Wharton SB, Savva G, Ince PG, Matthews F, Brayne C, on behalf of MRC-CFAS. (2009) Age, neuropathology and dementia. New England Journal of Medicine; 360(22)2302-9. |
