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主分层可忽略性下因果效应的多重稳健估计AI 解读

Abstract Causal inference concerns not only the average effect of the treatment on the outcome but also the underlying mechanism through an intermediate variable of interest. Principal stratification characterizes such a mechanism by targeting subgroup causal effects within principal strata, which are defined by the joint potential values of an intermediate variable. Due to the fundamental problem of causal inference, principal strata are inherently latent, rendering it…

析因实验中的回归因果推断：目标量、模型设定与基于设计的性质AI 解读

Summary Factorial designs are widely used because of their ability to accommodate multiple factors simultaneously. Factor-based regression with main effects and some interactions is the dominant strategy for downstream analysis, delivering point estimators and standard errors simultaneously via one least-squares fit. Justification of these convenient estimators from the design-based perspective requires quantifying their sampling properties under the assignment mechanism…

彭鼎对《广义线性模型参数的弱假设推断》的讨论AI 解读

I want to congratulate the authors on a thought-provoking paper on statistical inference with misspecified models. It deepens our understanding of the role of models in causal inference. I offer two comments. Comparison of the conditional and marginal estimands based on 105 Monte Carlo samples. The parameters of the distributions of L and Y are all drawn independently from Uniform(0, 1) The authors provide inspiring derivations of the novel average effect and interaction…

裂区实验中设计式与模型式因果推断的协调AI 解读

The split-plot design arose from agricultural science with experimental units, also known as the subplots, nested within groups known as the whole plots. It assigns different interventions at the whole-plot and subplot levels, respectively, providing a convenient way to accommodate hard-to-change factors. By design, subplots within the same whole plot receive the same level of the whole-plot intervention, and thereby induce a group structure on the final treatment…

针对平均处理效应的协变量调整 Fisher 随机化检验AI 解读

Fisher’s randomization test (frt) delivers exact p-values under the strong null hypothesis of no treatment effect on any units whatsoever and allows for flexible covariate adjustment to improve the power. Of interest is whether the resulting covariate-adjusted procedure could also be valid for testing the weak null hypothesis of zero average treatment effect. To this end, we evaluate two general strategies for conducting covariate adjustment in frts: the pseudo-outcome…

协变量数量增长时完全随机实验中的回归调整AI 解读

Summary Randomized experiments have become important tools in empirical research. In a completely randomized treatment-control experiment, the simple difference in means of the outcome is un- biased for the average treatment effect, and covariate adjustment can further improve the efficiency without assuming a correctly specified outcome model. In modern applications, experimenters often have access to many covariates, motivating the need for a theory of covariate adjustment…

整群随机实验的模型辅助分析AI 解读

Abstract Cluster-randomized experiments are widely used due to their logistical convenience and policy relevance. To analyse them properly, we must address the fact that the treatment is assigned at the cluster level instead of the individual level. Standard analytic strategies are regressions based on individual data, cluster averages and cluster totals, which differ when the cluster sizes vary. These methods are often motivated by models with strong and unverifiable…

随机实验中弱零假设的随机化检验AI 解读

The Fisher randomization test (FRT) is appropriate for any test statistic, under a sharp null hypothesis that can recover all missing potential outcomes. However, it is often sought after to test a weak null hypothesis that the treatment does not affect the units on average. To use the FRT for a weak null hypothesis, we must address two issues. First, we need to impute the missing potential outcomes although the weak null hypothesis cannot determine all of them. Second, we…

高维协变量观察性研究中的重叠性AI 解读

Estimating causal effects under exogeneity hinges on two key assumptions: unconfoundedness and overlap. Researchers often argue that unconfoundedness is more plausible when more covariates are included in the analysis. Less discussed is the fact that covariate overlap is more difficult to satisfy in this setting. In this paper, we explore the implications of overlap in observational studies with high-dimensional covariates and formalize curse-of-dimensionality argument,…

合并多个观察性数据源估计因果效应AI 解读

The era of big data has witnessed an increasing availability of multiple data sources for statistical analyses. We consider estimation of causal effects combining big main data with unmeasured confounders and smaller validation data with supplementary information on these confounders. Under the unconfoundedness assumption with completely observed confounders, the smaller validation data allow for constructing consistent estimators for causal effects, but the big main data…

二元工具变量模型中的测量误差AI 解读

Summary Instrumental variable methods can identify causal effects even when the treatment and outcome are confounded. We study the problem of imperfect measurements of the binary instrumental variable, treatment and outcome. We first consider nondifferential measurement errors, that is, the mismeasured variable does not depend on other variables given its true value. We show that the measurement error of the instrumental variable does not bias the estimate, that the…

再随机化与回归调整AI 解读

Summary Randomization is a basis for the statistical inference of treatment effects without strong assumptions on the outcome-generating process. Appropriately using covariates further yields more precise estimators in randomized experiments. R. A. Fisher suggested blocking on discrete covariates in the design stage or conducting analysis of covariance in the analysis stage. We can embed blocking in a wider class of experimental design called rerandomization, and extend the…

二水平多因子实验中的重随机化AI 解读

With many pretreatment covariates and treatment factors, the classical factorial experiment often fails to balance covariates across multiple factorial effects simultaneously. Therefore, it is intuitive to restrict the randomization of the treatment factors to satisfy certain covariate balance criteria, possibly conforming to the tiers of factorial effects and covariates based on their relative importances. This is rerandomization in factorial experiments. We study the…

同伴效应的随机化推断AI 解读

Xinran Lia, Peng Dingb*, Qian Linc, Dawei Yangd & Jun S. Liuaa Department of Statistics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; b Department of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley, CA; c Center for Statistical Science, Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P. R. China; d Bureau of Personnel of Chinese Academy of Sciences & School of Education of Peking University, Beijing, P. R. ChinaSupplementary materials for this article are available…

处理效应变异的分解AI 解读

Understanding and characterizing treatment effect variation in randomized experiments has become essential for going beyond the “black box” of the average treatment effect. Nonetheless, traditional statistical approaches often ignore or assume away such variation. In the context of randomized experiments, this article proposes a framework for decomposing overall treatment effect variation into a systematic component explained by observed covariates and a remaining…

中介分析中的主层可忽略性：贯通并超越序贯可忽略性AI 解读

In causal mediation analysis, the definitions of the natural direct and indirect effects involve potential outcomes that can never be observed, so-called a priori counterfactuals. This conceptual challenge translates into issues in identification, which requires strong and often unverifiable assumptions, including sequential ignorability. Alternatively, we can deal with post-treatment variables using the principal stratification framework, where causal effects are defined as…

裂区设计中的随机化因果推断AI 解读

Under the potential outcomes framework, we propose a randomization based estimation procedure for causal inference from split-plot designs, with special emphasis on $2^{2}$ designs that naturally arise in many social, behavioral and biomedical experiments. Point estimators of factorial effects are obtained and their sampling variances are derived in closed form as linear combinations of the between- and within-group covariances of the potential outcomes. Results are compared…

随机化视角下的方差分析：对处理效应异质性稳健的检验统计量AI 解读

Fisher randomization tests for Neyman’s null hypothesis of no average treatment effect are considered in a finite-population setting associated with completely randomized experiments involving more than two treatments. The consequences of using the |$F$| statistic to conduct such a test are examined, and we argue that under treatment effect heterogeneity, use of the |$F$| statistic in the Fisher randomization test can severely inflate the Type I error under Neyman’s null…

有限总体中心极限定理的一般形式及其因果推断应用AI 解读

Frequentists’ inference often delivers point estimators associated with confidence intervals or sets for parameters of interest. Constructing the confidence intervals or sets requires understanding the sampling distributions of the point estimators, which, in many but not all cases, are related to asymptotic Normal distributions ensured by central limit theorems. Although previous literature has established various forms of central limit theorems for statistical inference in…

基于主层评分的主分层分析AI 解读

Summary Practitioners are interested in not only the average causal effect of a treatment on the outcome but also the underlying causal mechanism in the presence of an intermediate variable between the treatment and outcome. However, in many cases we cannot randomize the intermediate variable, resulting in sample selection problems even in randomized experiments. Therefore, we view randomized experiments with intermediate variables as semiobservational studies. In parallel…

非可忽略缺失下正态及正态混合模型的可识别性AI 解读

Missing data problems arise in many applied research studies. They may jeopardize statistical inference of the model of interest, if the missing mechanism is nonignorable, that is, the missing mechanism depends on the missing values themselves even conditional on the observed data. With a nonignorable missing mechanism, the model of interest is often not identifiable without imposing further assumptions. We find that even if the missing mechanism has a known parametric form,…

利用多项试验识别主层因果效应并评价替代终点AI 解读

Summary Principal stratification is a causal framework to analyse randomized experiments with a post-treatment variable between the treatment and end point variables. Because the principal strata defined by the potential outcomes of the post-treatment variable are not observable, we generally cannot identify the causal effects within principal strata. Motivated by a real data set of phase III adjuvant colon cancer clinical trials, we propose approaches to identifying and…

处理效应变异的随机化推断AI 解读

Summary Applied researchers are increasingly interested in whether and how treatment effects vary in randomized evaluations, especially variation that is not explained by observed covariates. We propose a model-free approach for testing for the presence of such unexplained variation. To use this randomization-based approach, we must address the fact that the average treatment effect, which is generally the object of interest in randomized experiments, actually acts as a…

未测中介—结局混杂下中介效应的锐敏感性界限AI 解读

It is often of interest to decompose the total effect of an exposure into a component that acts on the outcome through some mediator and a component that acts independently through other pathways. Said another way, we are interested in the direct and indirect effects of the exposure on the outcome. Even if the exposure is randomly assigned, it is often infeasible to randomize the mediator, leaving the mediator-outcome confounding not fully controlled. We develop a…