本页提供题录、可核实摘要与阅读线索。AI 解读未完成全文核验，可能有误；具体假设、证明和结论请核对原文。仅依据书目生成的内容属于阅读导航，不是对论文结论的确认。
摘要保留来源文本，未经模型改写。材料不足时保留待解读状态；引用采用 OpenAlex 单条关联记录，不合计版本，缺失不视为零，也不代表论文质量。
正在核对对应版本的资源…
For estimating causal effects of treatments, randomized experiments are generally considered the gold standard. Nevertheless, they are often infeasible to conduct for a variety of reasons, such as ethical concerns, excessive expense, or timeliness. Consequently, much of our knowledge of causal effects must come from non-randomized observational studies. This article will advocate the position that observational studies can and should be designed to approximate randomized experiments as closely as possible. In particular, observational studies should be designed using only background information to create subgroups of similar treated and control units, where 'similar' here refers to their distributions of background variables. Of great importance, this activity should be conducted without any access to any outcome data, thereby assuring the objectivity of the design. In many situations, this objective creation of subgroups of similar treated and control units, which are balanced with respect to covariates, can be accomplished using propensity score methods. The theoretical perspective underlying this position will be presented followed by a particular application in the context of the US tobacco litigation. This application uses propensity score methods to create subgroups of treated units (male current smokers) and control units (male never smokers) who are at least as similar with respect to their distributions of observed background characteristics as if they had been randomized. The collection of these subgroups then 'approximate' a randomized block experiment with respect to the observed covariates.