Investigation of the genetic basis of traits or clinical outcomes heavily relies on identifying relevant variables in molecular data. However, characteristics such as high dimensionality and complex correlation structures of these data hinder the development of related methods, resulting in the inclusion of false positives and negatives. We developed a variable importance measure method, termed the ECAR scores, that evaluates the importance of variables in the dataset. Based on this score, ranking and selection of variables can be achieved simultaneously. Unlike most current approaches, the ECAR scores aim to rank the influential variables as high as possible while maintaining the grouping property, instead of selecting the ones that are merely predictive. The ECAR scores' performance is tested and compared to other methods on simulated, semi-synthetic, and real datasets. Results showed that the ECAR scores improve the CAR scores in terms of accuracy of variable selection and high-rank variables' predictive power. It also outperforms other classic methods such as lasso and stability selection when there is a high degree of correlation among influential variables. As an application, we used the ECAR scores to analyze genes associated with forced expiratory volume in the first second in patients with lung cancer and reported six associated genes.
© 2021. The Author(s).