论文标题
观察性研究中的因果关系依赖性取样的因果界限
Causal bounds for outcome-dependent sampling in observational studies
论文作者
论文摘要
依赖结果的抽样设计在许多不同的科学领域都很常见,包括流行病学,生态学和经济学。与所有观察性研究一样,这种设计通常会遭受未衡量的混杂状态,这通常排除了因果效应的非参数鉴定。非参数界限可以提供一种方法来缩小非识别因果效应的可能值范围,而无需做出其他无法测试的假设。非参数范围文献几乎仅专注于随机采样的设置,并且经常使用特定的线性编程方法得出边界。在六个环境中,我们得出了因果风险差异的新颖界限,通常称为平均治疗效果,依赖结果依赖性抽样和未衡量的混杂,以造成二进制结果和暴露。我们对边界的推导说明了两种方法可能适用于其他设置,在其他设置中,边界问题不能直接表示为线性约束系统。我们在一个真实的数据示例中说明了我们的派生界限,涉及维生素D浓度对死亡率的影响。
Outcome-dependent sampling designs are common in many different scientific fields including epidemiology, ecology, and economics. As with all observational studies, such designs often suffer from unmeasured confounding, which generally precludes the nonparametric identification of causal effects. Nonparametric bounds can provide a way to narrow the range of possible values for a nonidentifiable causal effect without making additional untestable assumptions. The nonparametric bounds literature has almost exclusively focused on settings with random sampling, and the bounds have often been derived with a particular linear programming method. We derive novel bounds for the causal risk difference, often referred to as the average treatment effect, in six settings with outcome-dependent sampling and unmeasured confounding for a binary outcome and exposure. Our derivations of the bounds illustrate two approaches that may be applicable in other settings where the bounding problem cannot be directly stated as a system of linear constraints. We illustrate our derived bounds in a real data example involving the effect of vitamin D concentration on mortality.