Simulation of synthetic data
REGRESSION
To obtain the simulated outcomes, two components are required: (1) regression coefficients from the DD models and (2) synthetic predictors (i.e., a treatment group variable and covariates for adjustment). The amount of zero counts in the simulated outcomes reflects both the regression coefficients and the synthetic predictors. Synthetic predictors were generated using three sampling distributions: (1) binomial distribution for the treatment group, (2) multinomial distribution for baseline risk, and (3) truncated normal distribution for age. The values of the parameter(s) in the sampling distributions were generated using a uniform distribution with parameters reflecting the observed data (see Additional file 