English

On Defense of the Hazard Ratio

Statistics Theory 2023-10-20 v2 Statistics Theory

Abstract

In this short communication, we describe the recent debate on whether the hazard function should be used for causal inference in time-to-event studies and consider three different potential outcomes frameworks (by Rubin, Robins, and Pearl, respectively) as well as use the single-world intervention graph to show mathematically that the hazard function has causal interpretations under all three frameworks. In addition, we argue that the hazard ratio over time can provide a useful interpretation in practical settings.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2307.11971,
  title  = {On Defense of the Hazard Ratio},
  author = {Andrew Ying and Ronghui Xu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.11971},
  year   = {2023}
}