The MR Data Challenge 2024

The challenge

The themes of the Data Challenge will be on “MR in multi-ancestry and non-European populations” and “Mental health”. The MR Data Challenge will engage conference participants in exploring and developing innovative approaches to causal inference using an example data set. Data Challenge participants are asked to use all or part of the data set to illustrate new methodology and to compare or explain existing methods as part of an oral presentation. Participants can be individuals or teams of (not more than four) individuals.

Summary-level data will be available for major depressive disorder and alcohol use disorder. Data will be available by 24th of May 2024. If you wish to participate in the Data Challenge, please register your interest here, where we will forward you a link to the data.

A plenary session on Friday 21st June within the Mendelian randomization conference will showcase the submitted analyses. A key aim of the session will be to bring together methodologists and statisticians with experts from epidemiology, medical and biological sciences, to comment and debate the results.

Please submit your entry to mr-conference@bristol.ac.uk by the closing date of 12th June 2024. Entrants must be registered conference attendees. There are no other entry requirements or costs.

Submitting to the data challenge

The MRChallenge2024 Github page providing all data and documentation can be found here.

Participants are asked to submit the knitted output from an R Markdown .Rmd file (in either docx, pdf, html, or .nb.html format) containing the following sections:

  1. Participants: Name(s) and affiliation(s) of entrant(s)
  2. Analysis methods: A non-technical description of the methodological approach taken in your analysis.
  3. Results: including tabular and graphical summaries.
  4. Technical appendix: Further technical details underpinning the approach taken.
  5. Software: R code used to run the analysis.
  6. References: References and links to additional technical reports of relevance to the work.

Please submit your entry to mr-conference@bristol.ac.uk by the closing date of 12th June 2024.

If you have any questions about the data challenge, please contact Chin Yang Shapland.