论文标题

与隐藏的混杂因素的剂量反应的部分识别

Partial Identification of Dose Responses with Hidden Confounders

论文作者

Marmarelis, Myrl G., Haddad, Elizabeth, Jesson, Andrew, Jahanshad, Neda, Galstyan, Aram, Steeg, Greg Ver

论文摘要

从观察数据中推断出连续价值处理的因果关系是一项至关重要的任务,有望更好地为政策和决策者提供信息。确定这些影响所需的一个关键假设是,所有混淆变量(治疗和结果的因果父母)都包括在协变量中。不幸的是,仅鉴于观察数据,我们无法肯定地知道该标准是满足的。当隐藏混淆变量时,敏感性分析提供了有原则的方法来给出因果估计的界限。尽管很多关注的重点是用于离散值处理的敏感性分析,但对连续值的处理却少得多。当由于隐藏的混杂而无法确定点时,我们将新的方法与平均和条件平均连续值的治疗效应估计相结合。多个数据集上的半合成基准测试表明,与最近提出的连续灵敏度模型和基准线相比,我们的方法对真实剂量反应曲线的覆盖更加严格。最后,我们将我们的方法应用于现实世界的观察案例研究,以证明鉴定剂量依赖性因果效应的价值。

Inferring causal effects of continuous-valued treatments from observational data is a crucial task promising to better inform policy- and decision-makers. A critical assumption needed to identify these effects is that all confounding variables -- causal parents of both the treatment and the outcome -- are included as covariates. Unfortunately, given observational data alone, we cannot know with certainty that this criterion is satisfied. Sensitivity analyses provide principled ways to give bounds on causal estimates when confounding variables are hidden. While much attention is focused on sensitivity analyses for discrete-valued treatments, much less is paid to continuous-valued treatments. We present novel methodology to bound both average and conditional average continuous-valued treatment-effect estimates when they cannot be point identified due to hidden confounding. A semi-synthetic benchmark on multiple datasets shows our method giving tighter coverage of the true dose-response curve than a recently proposed continuous sensitivity model and baselines. Finally, we apply our method to a real-world observational case study to demonstrate the value of identifying dose-dependent causal effects.

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