I am working with an Epidemiologist and she said
“Why deprivation index, it is only a confounder” ? I am trying to understand what this means and here’s the context behind this statement.
The study objective is to estimate the effects of Race/Ethnicity on Lead content in the mothers blood. So exposure here is Race/Ethnicity (A), outcome is Lead content in the blood (y).
The scientist involved in this study suggested including deprivation index as a confounder. Deprivation index is a quantitative measure indicating how deprived a neighborhood is ? For example if I am staying in Boston, MA then the deprivation index = 80 indicates that Boston, MA is good neighborhood, a deprivation index = 10 , Flint Michigan indicates that this is a bad neighborhood . So this is the deprivation index variable.
The Epidemiologist said, why deprivation index its only a confounder ? I have no idea what this means, I need some help understanding the meaning behind this statement. Arent we supposed to include confounders that are related to exposure in our model ?
Thanks.
-Sudhi