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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Adaptive Pre-Specification In Randomized Trials With And Without Pair-Matching, Laura B. Balzer, Mark J. Van Der Laan, Maya L. Petersen
Adaptive Pre-Specification In Randomized Trials With And Without Pair-Matching, Laura B. Balzer, Mark J. Van Der Laan, Maya L. Petersen
Laura B. Balzer
In randomized trials, adjustment for measured covariates during the analysis can reduce variance and increase power. To avoid misleading inference, the analysis plan must be pre-specified. However, it is unclear a priori which baseline covariates (if any) should be included in the analysis. Consider, for example, the Sustainable East Africa Research in Community Health (SEARCH) trial for HIV prevention and treatment. There are 16 matched pairs of communities and many potential adjustment variables, including region, HIV prevalence, male circumcision coverage and measures of community-level viral load. In this paper, we propose a rigorous procedure to data-adaptively select the adjustment set …
Why Match In Individually And Cluster Randomized Trials?, Laura B. Balzer, Maya L. Petersen, Mark J. Van Der Laan
Why Match In Individually And Cluster Randomized Trials?, Laura B. Balzer, Maya L. Petersen, Mark J. 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 thought to improve study credibility. Matching is also implemented to increase study power. This article compares the asymptotic efficiency of the pair-matched design, where units are matched on baseline covariates and the treatment randomized within pairs, to the independent design, where units are randomly paired and the treatment randomized within pairs. We focus on estimating the average treatment effect and use the efficient influence curve to understand the information provided by …
A Practical Illustration Of The Importance Of Realistic Individualized Treatment Rules In Causal Inference, Oliver Bembom, Mark J. Van Der Laan
A Practical Illustration Of The Importance Of Realistic Individualized Treatment Rules In Causal Inference, Oliver Bembom, Mark J. Van Der Laan
Oliver Bembom
The effect of vigorous physical activity on mortality in the elderly is difficult to estimate using conventional approaches to causal inference that define this effect by comparing the mortality risks corresponding to hypothetical scenarios in which all subjects in the target population engage in a given level of vigorous physical activity. A causal effect defined on the basis of such a static treatment intervention can only be identified from observed data if all subjects in the target population have a positive probability of selecting each of the candidate treatment options, an assumption that is highly unrealistic in this case since …