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Full-Text Articles in Epidemiology
Why Match In Individually And Cluster Randomized Trials?, Laura Balzer, Maya Petersen, Mark Van Der Laan
Why Match In Individually And Cluster Randomized Trials?, Laura Balzer, Maya Petersen, Mark Van Der Laan
Laura B. Balzer
The decision to match individuals or clusters in randomized trials is motivated by both practical and statistical concerns. Matching protects against chance imbalances in baseline covariate distributions and is thereby thought to improve study credibility. Matching is also implemented to increase study power. Analogue to Rose and van der Laan (2009), this article investigates the asymptotic efficiency of pair-matching individuals or clusters relative to not matching in randomized trials. We focus on estimating the average treatment effect. We use the efficient influence curve to understand the information provided by each design for estimation of the target causal parameter. Our approach …