Mediation Analysis with Multiple Mediators Subject to Missing Not at Random

原文摘要

Causal mediation analysis serves as a key tool for uncovering the mediating mechanisms linking treatments to outcomes. Existing methods for mediation analysis with multiple mediators typically assume complete observations or missing-at-random and may yield biased estimation when mediator values are missing not at random (MNAR). This paper studies the identification and estimation of causal mediation effects with multiple mediators subject to MNAR missingness. We consider a broad class of MNAR mechanisms in which missingness may depend on unobserved mediators, treatment, covariates, and outcomes. Under a series of increasingly general MNAR mechanisms, we establish identified natural direct and indirect effects, effectively generalizing existing mediation analysis to handle nonignorable missing mediators. Based on the proposed identification framework, we develop estimation procedures for causal mediation effects and evaluate their finite-sample performance through simulation studies. The results demonstrate satisfactory performance across a range of missingness scenarios. An application to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey(NHANES) illustrates the practical utility of the proposed methodology for investigating mediation pathways in the presence of nonignorable missing data.

摘要来源：arXiv