Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Biostatistics Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Biostatistics

Model Averaged Double Robust Estimation, Matthew Cefalu, Francesca Dominici, Nils D. Arvold Md, Giovanni Parmigiani Sep 2016

Model Averaged Double Robust Estimation, Matthew Cefalu, Francesca Dominici, Nils D. Arvold Md, Giovanni Parmigiani

Harvard University Biostatistics Working Paper Series

Existing methods in causal inference do not account for the uncertainty in the selection of confounders. We propose a new class of estimators for the average causal effect, the model averaged double robust estimators, that formally account for model uncertainty in both the propensity score and outcome model through the use of Bayesian model averaging. These estimators build on the desirable double robustness property by only requiring the true propensity score model or the true outcome model be within a specified class of models to maintain consistency. We provide asymptotic results and conduct a large scale simulation study that indicates …


Tmle For Marginal Structural Models Based On An Instrument, Boriska Toth, Mark J. Van Der Laan Jun 2016

Tmle For Marginal Structural Models Based On An Instrument, Boriska Toth, Mark J. Van Der Laan

U.C. Berkeley Division of Biostatistics Working Paper Series

We consider estimation of a causal effect of a possibly continuous treatment when treatment assignment is potentially subject to unmeasured confounding, but an instrumental variable is available. Our focus is on estimating heterogeneous treatment effects, so that the treatment effect can be a function of an arbitrary subset of the observed covariates. One setting where this framework is especially useful is with clinical outcomes. Allowing the causal dose-response curve to depend on a subset of the covariates, we define our parameter of interest to be the projection of the true dose-response curve onto a user-supplied working marginal structural model. We …


A General Framework For Diagnosing Confounding Of Time-Varying And Other Joint Exposures, John W. Jackson May 2015

A General Framework For Diagnosing Confounding Of Time-Varying And Other Joint Exposures, John W. Jackson

Harvard University Biostatistics Working Paper Series

No abstract provided.


Augmentation Of Propensity Scores For Medical Records-Based Research, Mikel Aickin Jun 2013

Augmentation Of Propensity Scores For Medical Records-Based Research, Mikel Aickin

COBRA Preprint Series

Therapeutic research based on electronic medical records suffers from the possibility of various kinds of confounding. Over the past 30 years, propensity scores have increasingly been used to try to reduce this possibility. In this article a gap is identified in the propensity score methodology, and it is proposed to augment traditional treatment-propensity scores with outcome-propensity scores, thereby removing all other aspects of common causes from the analysis of treatment effects.


Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation For Dynamic And Static Longitudinal Marginal Structural Working Models, Maya L. Petersen, Joshua Schwab, Susan Gruber, Nello Blaser, Michael Schomaker, Mark J. Van Der Laan May 2013

Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation For Dynamic And Static Longitudinal Marginal Structural Working Models, Maya L. Petersen, Joshua Schwab, Susan Gruber, Nello Blaser, Michael Schomaker, Mark J. Van Der Laan

U.C. Berkeley Division of Biostatistics Working Paper Series

This paper describes a targeted maximum likelihood estimator (TMLE) for the parameters of longitudinal static and dynamic marginal structural models. We consider a longitudinal data structure consisting of baseline covariates, time-dependent intervention nodes, intermediate time-dependent covariates, and a possibly time dependent outcome. The intervention nodes at each time point can include a binary treatment as well as a right-censoring indicator. Given a class of dynamic or static interventions, a marginal structural model is used to model the mean of the intervention specific counterfactual outcome as a function of the intervention, time point, and possibly a subset of baseline covariates. Because …


Causal Inference For Networks, Mark J. Van Der Laan Oct 2012

Causal Inference For Networks, Mark J. Van Der Laan

U.C. Berkeley Division of Biostatistics Working Paper Series

Suppose that we observe a population of causally connected units according to a network. On each unit we observe a set of potentially connected units that contains the true connections, and a longitudinal data structure, which includes time-dependent exposure or treatment, time-dependent covariates, a final outcome of interest. The target quantity of interest is defined as the mean outcome for this group of units if the exposures of the units would be probabilistically assigned according to a known specified mechanism, where the latter is called a stochastic intervention. Causal effects of interest are defined as contrasts of the mean of …


Adaptive Matching In Randomized Trials And Observational Studies, Mark J. Van Der Laan, Laura Balzer, Maya L. Petersen Jul 2012

Adaptive Matching In Randomized Trials And Observational Studies, Mark J. Van Der Laan, Laura Balzer, Maya L. Petersen

U.C. Berkeley Division of Biostatistics Working Paper Series

In many randomized and observational studies the allocation of treatment among a sample of n independent and identically distributed units is a function of the covariates of all sampled units. As a result, the treatment labels among the units are possibly dependent, complicating estimation and posing challenges for statistical inference. For example, cluster randomized trials frequently sample communities from some target population, construct matched pairs of communities from those included in the sample based on some metric of similarity in baseline community characteristics, and then randomly allocate a treatment and a control intervention within each matched pair. In this case, …