论文标题
基于图像的治疗效果异质性
Image-based Treatment Effect Heterogeneity
论文作者
论文摘要
随机对照试验(RCT)被认为是估计干预措施平均治疗效果(ATE)的黄金标准。 RCT的一种用途是研究全球贫困的原因,这是一个授予Duflo,Banerjee和Kremer的2019年诺贝尔纪念奖中明确引用的主题,以“减轻全球贫困的实验方法”。由于ATE是人口摘要,因此反贫困实验通常试图通过调节(CATE)(CATE)在RCT数据收集过程中测量的年龄和种族等表格变量(例如年龄和种族)来解开ATE周围的效果变化。尽管此类变量是解开CATE的关键,但仅使用此类变量可能无法捕获效果变异的历史,地理或邻里特定的贡献者,因为通常仅在实验时间附近观察到表格RCT数据。在全球贫困研究中,当实验单元的位置大致已知时,卫星图像可以为理解异质性的重要因素提供一个窗口。但是,没有任何方法可以专门使应用研究人员从图像中分析CATE。在本文中,使用深层概率建模框架,我们开发了一种方法,该方法通过识别具有相似治疗效果分布的图像来估算图像的潜在图像。我们可解释的图像CATE模型还包括一个灵敏度因子,该因子量化了图像段的重要性,从而有助于效应群集预测。我们将提出的方法与模拟中的替代方法进行比较。此外,我们还展示了该模型如何在实际的RCT中起作用,从而估算了乌干达北部的反贫困干预措施的影响,并在没有收集实验性数据的其他地区获得了对效果的后验预测分布。我们使所有型号都在开源软件中提供。
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the gold standard for estimating the average treatment effect (ATE) of interventions. One use of RCTs is to study the causes of global poverty -- a subject explicitly cited in the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize awarded to Duflo, Banerjee, and Kremer "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." Because the ATE is a population summary, anti-poverty experiments often seek to unpack the effect variation around the ATE by conditioning (CATE) on tabular variables such as age and ethnicity that were measured during the RCT data collection. Although such variables are key to unpacking CATE, using only such variables may fail to capture historical, geographical, or neighborhood-specific contributors to effect variation, as tabular RCT data are often only observed near the time of the experiment. In global poverty research, when the location of the experiment units is approximately known, satellite imagery can provide a window into such factors important for understanding heterogeneity. However, there is no method that specifically enables applied researchers to analyze CATE from images. In this paper, using a deep probabilistic modeling framework, we develop such a method that estimates latent clusters of images by identifying images with similar treatment effects distributions. Our interpretable image CATE model also includes a sensitivity factor that quantifies the importance of image segments contributing to the effect cluster prediction. We compare the proposed methods against alternatives in simulation; also, we show how the model works in an actual RCT, estimating the effects of an anti-poverty intervention in northern Uganda and obtaining a posterior predictive distribution over effects for the rest of the country where no experimental data was collected. We make all models available in open-source software.