Identification of causal effects in case-control studies
Methodology
2021-05-06 v1
Abstract
Case-control designs are an important tool in contrasting the effects of well-defined treatments. In this paper, we reconsider classical concepts, assumptions and principles and explore when the results of case-control studies can be endowed a causal interpretation. Our focus is on identification of target causal quantities, or estimands. We cover various estimands relating to intention-to-treat or per-protocol effects for popular sampling schemes (case-base, survivor, and risk-set sampling), each with and without matching. Our approach may inform future research on different estimands, other variations of the case-control design or settings with additional complexities.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2105.02077,
title = {Identification of causal effects in case-control studies},
author = {Bas B. L. Penning de Vries and Rolf H. H. Groenwold},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.02077},
year = {2021}
}